On Sunday 22 June 2008 10:53, alex wallis wrote:

> I agree that maybe the feature request tracker isn't the best way to handle
> feature requests, However I do like it because it is nice just to be able
> to go through and read everything that has been requested. If this was
> switched to a mailing list, I can see 2 problems. Firstly It wouldn't be as
> easy to search or brows as the current feature request tracker, and also I
> think that You would probably need to set up a new mailing list for feature
> requests, as I'm sure that neither the dev or rb users list would want to
> be spammed with them.

I completely agree that switching to a list would be a bad idea.

I do think the current tracker system is a very good way to record the
information - it is long-lived, new users can easily see historical postings,
and the search facility should, at least, significantly reduce the number of
duplicated requests (and if it doesn't, that's a user problem, not a feature
problem).

Perhaps the best solution would be to:

 - make it clear that "feature request" does not mean "a way of asking for
things which the developers will then implement" but more "a way of
suggesting ideas which might be used" so that people know that submitting a
feature request does not necessarily result in the software being coded to
implement it (perhaps just changing "request" to "suggestion" might be
helpful here?)

 - maintain the current tracker system, but simultaneously:

 - implement a new features discussion list (although I'm not *quite* sure I
see why this can't be the general users' list) where people are encouraged to
discuss new features in a similar but more accessible way to the multiple
comments which currently get added to the tracker - with the caveat that
anything not added to the tracker will not be searchable and will not be
visible to new visitors, therefore a comment should be added following
discussion on the list

Just my 2¤...

Antony.

-- 
I don't know, maybe if we all waited then cosmic rays would write all our 
software for us. Of course it might take a while.
 - Ron Minnich, Los Alamos National Laboratory
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