I threw this out there in the 03/16/2018 Q&A Stream thread but thought it might do well as its own thread. I'm interested to know if other members of the community would back a slightly more formal way of providing feedback than what the forums currently provide us with. This idea is in no way an indictment of the forum mods--they do a great job and work very hard to keep everything running smoothly--nor is it a criticism of the forums in general.
An idea to put out there:
It would be way cool to have an upvote system beyond the basic forums, accessible to master tier users or legendary bundle owners (or members with high contribution rates, long-term involvement, etc...not trying to disenfranchise anyone who doesn't shell out for the premium stuff). The group granted access would be provided with a token-based system that would renew at some regular interval (e.g. monthly, quarterly) allowing a limited number of upvotes (the number of tokens they are issued) for items currently sitting in the backlog.
I think this would be a cool way for those of us in the community to ask ourselves not only "What do you want to see added to D&DB?" but also "What do you want to see added the most?" We could see how others are casting their votes/tokens and I think this would quell some of the "When are you coming out with <whatever>?" questions that come up since we would know where our fellow adventurers are putting their weight and thus, where Curse is more likely to steer its resources. It would be a cool way for the development team on Curse's side of the fence to get a bead on where priorities lie from our perspective, with the knowledge that we really are limited to voting for our tippy-top wishlist items.
After all, the usefulness of the app is all in the eye of the beholder. (Waka waka waka!)
I added a poll to this thread (cause apparently I can do that!) to gauge interest. In any case, a big thank you to BadEye and Co. I'm truly excited to see how D&DB continues to grow and become all the more awesome. You guys ROCK! : )
"There is a wide world out there, my friend, full of pain, but filled with joy as well. The former keeps you on the path of growth, and the latter makes the journey tolerable." --Montolio Debrouchee
I would love just to see a more formal feature request backlog, but having a more formal voting system on top of that would be excellent, particularly if we could order by votes.
I do like the idea of a limited voting/token system, but I feel like it suffers a little bit from the same problem as the current system: how do you show differing levels of preference? For instance, if I have two tokens, and I vote for "Public API" (which I really, really, want) and "Custom Subclasses" (which I think would be nice to have, but I don't need), they both get the same weight.
One idea I had for backlog prioritizing/grooming (for a different project, but could be applied here) was a sort of "A vs B" system where users would go into a queue, and each round be shown two different features requests. They would then pick which feature they would prefer first. The system could then round-robin comparisons between every feature request, and over time order the backlog by user preference with increasing confidence.
The "head-to-head" method (and subsequent round-robin votes) is another cool way to orchestrate this. It would indeed be nice to emphasize the true order of desired features down to the level of individual users.
I do think there would need to be some way of keeping voting limited to users who had been specifically granted access to participate in this process. The concern would be spammed creation of accounts and unlimited "re-voting" by the same user leveraging multiple accounts. Be it "head-to-head" comparisons or flat-rate voting for desired features, there would need to be a way to a) limit the input appropriately, and b) provide transparency after the fact (for each round of voting, regardless of the way each one is executed) so that participants and developers can review the final results and benefit from the insight that they would bring.
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"There is a wide world out there, my friend, full of pain, but filled with joy as well. The former keeps you on the path of growth, and the latter makes the journey tolerable." --Montolio Debrouchee
I do think there would need to be some way of keeping voting limited to users who had been specifically granted access to participate in this process.
I agree there, too. Going back to your first post, I'm not sure I'd want it limited to Master Tier and/or Legendary Bundle owners (even though I fall into both). I think anyone purchased content should have a vote, and I think that would be enough of a limiting factor to prevent spam. Like you said, maybe allow individual accounts to be specially granted access based on forum participation.
If the intention is to provide a voting system to indicate what features the community would like to see, I'm interested in why you feel that master tier / legendary bundle holders should have more say on that, over users who haven't spent as much (or anything)?
There may be numerous people who are holding off on purchasing, as they consider a specific feature to be something that would have to be available before they consider the service to meet their needs.
That would also be valuable knowledge for the Curse team.
I'm mostly musing and trying to present an alternative perspective - I don't have access to the data that the staff team do, but I am confident that they have a good handle on prioritising the correct development to best benefit the community. :)
I agree there, too. Going back to your first post, I'm not sure I'd want it limited to Master Tier and/or Legendary Bundle owners (even though I fall into both). I think anyone purchased content should have a vote, and I think that would be enough of a limiting factor to prevent spam. Like you said, maybe allow individual accounts to be specially granted access based on forum participation.
Totally agree. Really, any purchase or extensive forum participation requirement would be enough to eliminate the risk of duped votes. And I'm all for inclusion--the more voices in the conversation, the better.
The Q&A stream today briefly touched on this, insofar as to promise some upcoming surveys aimed at gathering community feedback regarding feature prioritization. I'll be anxiously awaiting the chance to complete those. Hoping we'll get the chance (in a future Q&A stream, I'm assuming) to look at the collected data as it's analyzed by Curse. BadEye alluded to these surveys/polls already having been leveraged in the past (external to the forums). Maybe I missed those somehow (or maybe they were issued before I myself had paid for premium content, and that was a requirement for inclusion).
At any rate, I'm glad this is on the radar--I feel like we all have that one feature we're really dying for...this would be a great way for us all to voice those desires directly and individually and then to see where they stack up.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"There is a wide world out there, my friend, full of pain, but filled with joy as well. The former keeps you on the path of growth, and the latter makes the journey tolerable." --Montolio Debrouchee
If the intention is to provide a voting system to indicate what features the community would like to see, I'm interested in why you feel that master tier / legendary bundle holders should have more say on that, over users who haven't spent as much (or anything)?
I think I should have been more clear--I tried to say, parenthetically, that master tier/legendary users wouldn't necessarily be the only ones getting a say, but that it would just be one way of regulating votes. The concern that ApostleO and I were swapping replies on was simply related to the risk of duplicate account creation, making it possible to vote multiple times. Participation by invite, by hitting a minimum threshold of activity on the site, or by confirmed purchases would all scratch that itch. With regard to inclusion: the more the merrier!
I guess the whole idea behind this thread was to try to curb some of the "How long till we get to see [thing X]?" questions by giving the folks asking those questions the chance to vote for their top features in a limited way and then see how the community at large is putting its weight onto certain features. It might be easier for BadEye to point us to a tool like this and the results it generates than to remind us that he won't give any hard dates on releases (which I totally and completely understand). In a way, it kinda makes us ground-level users feel a little better about waiting for that one super-awesome magical thing. I may not get the feature I'm dying for right away, but I got to vote directly and officially and that feels good.
Adam and his team do an amazing job and I have no doubt that they are going to great lengths to analyze all the data that D&DB is generating. I'm so thankful to have such a killer dev team that has engaged with the community the way that this one has and I'm definitely a happy user, overall. I work in IT and manage a lot of purchasing and it is SO hard to find a vendor who genuinely cares about its users' feedback the way these guys do.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"There is a wide world out there, my friend, full of pain, but filled with joy as well. The former keeps you on the path of growth, and the latter makes the journey tolerable." --Montolio Debrouchee
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I threw this out there in the 03/16/2018 Q&A Stream thread but thought it might do well as its own thread. I'm interested to know if other members of the community would back a slightly more formal way of providing feedback than what the forums currently provide us with. This idea is in no way an indictment of the forum mods--they do a great job and work very hard to keep everything running smoothly--nor is it a criticism of the forums in general.
An idea to put out there:
It would be way cool to have an upvote system beyond the basic forums, accessible to master tier users or legendary bundle owners (or members with high contribution rates, long-term involvement, etc...not trying to disenfranchise anyone who doesn't shell out for the premium stuff). The group granted access would be provided with a token-based system that would renew at some regular interval (e.g. monthly, quarterly) allowing a limited number of upvotes (the number of tokens they are issued) for items currently sitting in the backlog.
I think this would be a cool way for those of us in the community to ask ourselves not only "What do you want to see added to D&DB?" but also "What do you want to see added the most?" We could see how others are casting their votes/tokens and I think this would quell some of the "When are you coming out with <whatever>?" questions that come up since we would know where our fellow adventurers are putting their weight and thus, where Curse is more likely to steer its resources. It would be a cool way for the development team on Curse's side of the fence to get a bead on where priorities lie from our perspective, with the knowledge that we really are limited to voting for our tippy-top wishlist items.
After all, the usefulness of the app is all in the eye of the beholder. (Waka waka waka!)
I added a poll to this thread (cause apparently I can do that!) to gauge interest. In any case, a big thank you to BadEye and Co. I'm truly excited to see how D&DB continues to grow and become all the more awesome. You guys ROCK! : )
"There is a wide world out there, my friend, full of pain, but filled with joy as well. The former keeps you on the path of growth, and the latter makes the journey tolerable." --Montolio Debrouchee
The "head-to-head" method (and subsequent round-robin votes) is another cool way to orchestrate this. It would indeed be nice to emphasize the true order of desired features down to the level of individual users.
I do think there would need to be some way of keeping voting limited to users who had been specifically granted access to participate in this process. The concern would be spammed creation of accounts and unlimited "re-voting" by the same user leveraging multiple accounts. Be it "head-to-head" comparisons or flat-rate voting for desired features, there would need to be a way to a) limit the input appropriately, and b) provide transparency after the fact (for each round of voting, regardless of the way each one is executed) so that participants and developers can review the final results and benefit from the insight that they would bring.
"There is a wide world out there, my friend, full of pain, but filled with joy as well. The former keeps you on the path of growth, and the latter makes the journey tolerable." --Montolio Debrouchee
If the intention is to provide a voting system to indicate what features the community would like to see, I'm interested in why you feel that master tier / legendary bundle holders should have more say on that, over users who haven't spent as much (or anything)?
There may be numerous people who are holding off on purchasing, as they consider a specific feature to be something that would have to be available before they consider the service to meet their needs.
That would also be valuable knowledge for the Curse team.
I'm mostly musing and trying to present an alternative perspective - I don't have access to the data that the staff team do, but I am confident that they have a good handle on prioritising the correct development to best benefit the community. :)
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Totally agree. Really, any purchase or extensive forum participation requirement would be enough to eliminate the risk of duped votes. And I'm all for inclusion--the more voices in the conversation, the better.
The Q&A stream today briefly touched on this, insofar as to promise some upcoming surveys aimed at gathering community feedback regarding feature prioritization. I'll be anxiously awaiting the chance to complete those. Hoping we'll get the chance (in a future Q&A stream, I'm assuming) to look at the collected data as it's analyzed by Curse. BadEye alluded to these surveys/polls already having been leveraged in the past (external to the forums). Maybe I missed those somehow (or maybe they were issued before I myself had paid for premium content, and that was a requirement for inclusion).
At any rate, I'm glad this is on the radar--I feel like we all have that one feature we're really dying for...this would be a great way for us all to voice those desires directly and individually and then to see where they stack up.
"There is a wide world out there, my friend, full of pain, but filled with joy as well. The former keeps you on the path of growth, and the latter makes the journey tolerable." --Montolio Debrouchee
"There is a wide world out there, my friend, full of pain, but filled with joy as well. The former keeps you on the path of growth, and the latter makes the journey tolerable." --Montolio Debrouchee