Administrivia: Ideas forum

[Schwartz]

I'm going to change the way we're managing the ideas on this part of the forum.

In the interest of allowing you to know what we're actively considering and chime in with input without us getting distracted by the resuscitation of old threads, I'm going to begin closing individual threads once we've wrapped up discussion on each.

Ideas will not be open for discussion forever, so if you have an opinion on an open idea, be sure to speak up. This is important. Once the idea is closed, you will no longer have the opportunity to have your voice heard.

We'll give it a shot and see how it works. If you've got feedback for or against, please seek me out privately to discuss.

Thanks!

[Tynian]

I have enabled "prefix" ability in the idea forum. This allows a god+ to set a prefix on the thread to show its status. A god+ has to edit the first post of the thread in order to set a prefix, so if you started a thread and wonder why a god+ edited it, this is likely the reason.

When a thread is first started, no prefix is set. This is the default state.

Threads will remain open at least a week*. After this time, god+ will evaluate the thread.

If an idea gets generally positive feedback, we may consider implementing the idea for a future release. Those threads will get a prefix of either V4 CONSIDER or V5 CONSIDER and closed.

If a thread gets little or no feedback from other players, it may be prefixed as LOW INTEREST and may either be left open a little longer to allow for additional feedback, or closed.

If a thread is contentious, many of the responding players are against the idea, or there is no clear-cut course of action, the thread may receive a NO CONSENSUS prefix and closed.

If we decide that the ideas in a thread should not be implemented at this time, it will receive a DECLINED prefix and closed. This might occur if the idea would be too labor intensive for the game, if it conflicts with other ideas under consideration, or if there is some other reason it may not be a good fit. We could change our collective minds in the future.

It will be easiest to deal with if each idea presented is in its own thread.

In general, what we're looking for are convincing reasons why a feature should be added, changed or removed. The strength of the argument is much more important than the number of people that agree or disagree.

While this might seem awfully... structured, I hope that it will help us keep track of what ideas are being actively considered, and provide some status for ideas that have been open a while.

* We may actually evaluate and close threads earlier, if there's a good reason to do so.

[Tynian]

Once an idea has been opened for at least a week, I have to decide its fate. I base that decision on various factors, such as the amount of discussion an idea generated (shows interest), the strength of the arguments for or against an idea, estimated coding difficulty, my feelings about an idea, how the proposed idea fits into my other plans, and other factors.

If I am considering an idea further, I will usually open a project ticket for it by importing a single post into the ticket. The post I choose to import may best describe the idea being considered, or may be chosen based on factors mentioned within the post that I wish to consider further. When a post is imported, a link to the thread is also automatically provided, so that I can easily find and refer to other posts within that thread when necessary.

While I may implement an idea exactly as it was proposed, I may also go in a whole other direction, or decide not to move forward with implementation.

If an idea is not selected, it is not a reflection on who proposed the idea, and shouldn't necessarily imply that the idea was "bad." It just may not be the right time for the idea. It take a lot of time to cull the ideas, but it is time I'm more than willing to spend, since good ideas come to light. Once I've decided on an idea one way or another, please avoid bringing it up again for a while. The idea has already been discussed and did not move forward for whatever reason. Let it die. I'll never get any actual coding done if we rehash the same ol' ideas. Let's not fall into that trap.