IPBSupport.de Posted August 29, 2011 Posted August 29, 2011 I report bugs and post in feedback forum since years and i have still the feeling, the feedback forum is not the best solution to get feedback/improvment ideas from the community. There are soooo many good ideas and improvments in the feedback forum and we almost never receive feedback from the IPS-DEV-Team. According to my opinion every idea/post in a feedback (!!!) forum should also become a feedback from a developer, only with feedback from both sides (community <-> developer) this can work well.So my suggestion is: Switch from the (poor) feedback forums to the tracker. The tracker has good features to store feedback/feature suggestions and a lot of bugs which closed with the answer "More a improvement than a bug" (although its a bug) can still used from members to vote for the suggestion (+1/-1 feature of tracker) and the IPS-DEV-Team has a better overview about all the community feedback (maybe include a rating from the DEV-Team how important the feedback is / whether the idea will be implemented). Maybe for a better overview in tracker, there should be new categorys ("projects") for the feedback.
rgf100 Posted August 29, 2011 Posted August 29, 2011 Either more IPS presences in the feedback forum, or a new 'suggestions' category for the bug tracker or something. At the moment things are just frustrating.
IPBSupport.de Posted August 29, 2011 Author Posted August 29, 2011 Yes, the main problem is the (not existing) presence from the developer team in the feedback forum. If you post a feedback/feature suggestion/improvement there should always be a response from a developer so everyone can discuss with the dev about the feedback. The only way to make this a "real feedback forum". But i still thing the switch to the tracker is the best solution.
nrep Posted August 29, 2011 Posted August 29, 2011 Yes, totally agree with this. At the moment, I don't know if feedback posts are considered or what other people think of it unless they reply - more dev feedback or using the tracker would be a good way to solve this. I apprechiate that bug-squashing is high on the list of priorities, but I'm sure there is a better way of organising suggestions.
rgf100 Posted August 29, 2011 Posted August 29, 2011 To be honest it's not just the Feedback forum - I've got at least a couple of topics in the 'support' forums where we're meant to be getting more staff assistance - nothing. Even a 'that's a stupid question, you're doing it wrong' would be appreciated.
IPBSupport.de Posted August 29, 2011 Author Posted August 29, 2011 To be honest it's not just the Feedback forum - I've got at least a couple of topics in the 'support' forums where we're meant to be getting more staff assistance - nothing. Even a 'that's a stupid question, you're doing it wrong' would be appreciated. Mh, yes - my topic is still not answered. Either we have a wrong understanding about the support forum (i not read that there is no guaranteed response!!!) or the IPS-Staff can't handle the many topics in the "official support forums". If there is no guaranteed response IPS should clarify this in the forum notes on the support forums.
bfarber Posted August 29, 2011 Posted August 29, 2011 Our official technical support is only guaranteed through the client center. As for the feedback forum, if we spent the time to respond to every single feedback topic, we'd never do any developing. We read all the feedback topics, but frankly, it's impossible, unrealistic, and unnecessary to reply to every single one.
IPBSupport.de Posted August 29, 2011 Author Posted August 29, 2011 Our official technical support is only guaranteed through the client center. Thats okay, but you should declare this in the notes in the support forums, because the announcement from lindy look like this is a official (and not "not guaranteed" support forum).As for the feedback forum, if we spent the time to respond to every single feedback topic, we'd never do any developing. We read all the feedback topics, but frankly, it's impossible, unrealistic, and unnecessary to reply to every single one. Thats not unrealistic. If (!) you can read all topics you can also reply to it. A quick answer is not "unrealistic" and written in one or under a minute. The switch from the (confusing) forum to a tracker (projekt) would help you (and the community) to manage and talk about feedback and also save time.
Aisha Posted August 29, 2011 Posted August 29, 2011 As for the feedback forum, if we spent the time to respond to every single feedback topic, we'd never do any developing. You should hire somebody to reply to feedback. y;
bfarber Posted August 30, 2011 Posted August 30, 2011 Thats okay, but you should declare this in the notes in the support forums, because the announcement from lindy look like this is a official (and not "not guaranteed" support forum). Thats not unrealistic. If (!) you can read all topics you can also reply to it. A quick answer is not "unrealistic" and written in one or under a minute. The switch from the (confusing) forum to a tracker (projekt) would help you (and the community) to manage and talk about feedback and also save time. If I reply to 200 feedback topics in a day and can do that in one minute each (which is near impossible, because I have to read the topic first too...) that's 200 minutes every day not spent developing. Just saying...
Mark Posted August 30, 2011 Posted August 30, 2011 The reason we don't reply to many feedback topics is simply because we don't have anything to say. We never read a suggestion and immediately drop everything to code it in, nor does any one developer read a suggestion and think "No, that's never going to happen" - that's not the way the development cycle works, we make decisions on feature lists together as a team. We do read every suggestion, and reply to many. The ones we don't reply to is because all we would have to say is "Good idea - thanks for the suggestion". I can't see how posting that dozens of times a day is anything short of a complete waste of time ;)
Rikki Posted August 30, 2011 Posted August 30, 2011 It's also worth saying that a feature doesn't often get included just because one person suggested it (unless it's a really good idea). We look for trends in what people want, and what they want to achieve. Then, when the next development cycle starts, we formulate several lists of ideas on a scale of how important they are, and work from that. So individual topics don't necessarily lead to a new feature, but the overall trends do. This is how tagging became a feature - not because one person asked for it, but because we noticed a trend. I also think that having a developer involved in topics could stifle the discussion somewhat. If someone suggests something, and a developer posts 'good idea, we'll do it', then anyone coming along afterwards has little incentive to offer an alternative viewpoint because it appears we've already made a decision (and that's not how we work, as I mentioned above). It's better to allow customers to discuss ideas amongst each other while they figure out what they need to achieve, while we observe and act in the background :)
• Jay • Posted August 30, 2011 Posted August 30, 2011 Multi-mod! Click and go :P (I am, of course, being facetious)
Management Matt Posted August 31, 2011 Management Posted August 31, 2011 As Mark and Rikki have noted, maintaining a database of individual suggestions is just a massive waste of time. I'll quickly add that leaving feedback is not a waste of time. Between us, I'd say we read 95% of feedback in these forums. We don't action every single one and neither do we often take an idea that has been presented and code it in exactly as suggested. We look for trends. Sometimes, different feedback will be left that has a root cause. We'll look at changing that root cause directly. This is what we call trends. Sometimes we do act on specific feedback if it gathers enough traction but our solution may not be immediately obvious. Take the recent topics on "we want avatars back!". We rolled this around and waited for the feedback to "bake". When we distilled it down, it wasn't so much that everyone wanted "avatars back" - they just wanted the ability for topics to have the full size photograph and not a square thumb. Our solution was to enable this as a minor setting within the Admin CP. One of our competitors uses a massively complex piece of tracking software for feedback and ask for members to 'vote' on the popular items. I think this is the wrong approach because what might seem like a good idea can weaken the software or make it perform badly. We are responsible for the entire platform and everything we add has to be sympathetic towards it. Simply throwing in everything that people are shouting loudly about is a poor way to maintain quality and user experience.
ørret Posted August 31, 2011 Posted August 31, 2011 Make a script or a user "IPS-ROBOT" that auto-reply "Brilliant idea!" to all new topics.
nrep Posted August 31, 2011 Posted August 31, 2011 I think the point some of us are making is that it's sometimes hard to know that feedback is being read to if we don't hear anything on it. I know it's unrealistic to expect replies and comments from IPS Staff on most ideas, especially when there has been a recent release with bug squishing taking priority. As an example, here are 3 recent suggestions I've made:Disallow Permenant DeletionDefault VNC TypeIP Content - Allow image field resize The first idea got quite a few replies and likes, but that doesn't mean that it would be something that IPS would necessarily include it - but I'd guess it was probably read. The latter 2 options are small tweaks that may not be as popular, but seemed like useful suggestions - however they could just go unread and disappear off the end of the forum page as they didn't get any replies. At the moment, the only way we'd know about if our feedback was being considered would be to wait and see if it appears? I don't know the answer on how this could be done any better, but I thought I'd explain the thought process from a customer point-of-view in case it helps.
Management Matt Posted August 31, 2011 Management Posted August 31, 2011 OK, here's how I process your first topic 'Disallow Permanent Deletion'. You ask for a way to remove super administrators from having permission to delete items. My thinking is: Why does he want that? Because he doesn't want anyone deleting content. So we have two options - the first being to add a setting that removes the delete option for everyone or we can introduce better permission handling for super moderators. In this case, we've discussed better permission handling for super moderators so this is likely what we'll do - but it's a fairly large change so it won't be a minor point release. Thus, we'll not look at adding a setting because it would be removed in a future version and just cause confusion.
rgf100 Posted August 31, 2011 Posted August 31, 2011 Our official technical support is only guaranteed through the client center. Sorry, but when I read this I have to admit I'd hoped for better responses than this and this, or to give someone else's topic an airing, this. Maybe these are stupid questions - God knows some of my previous ones have been - but answering stupid questions is, unfortunately, the lot of anyone selling complex software. A solution, a link to documentation we've missed, a hint in the right direction, a simple 'you can't do it, tough.' "additional IPS staff dedicated to frequenting these forums" makes it sound like you have multiple full-time staff doing this. I've lately felt like I've been posting on their coffee breaks. I'm not saying they need to post in every topic, but if something's been sitting there a few days and peer support hasn't sorted it out . . .
Feld0 Posted August 31, 2011 Posted August 31, 2011 OK, here's how I process your first topic 'Disallow Permanent Deletion'. You ask for a way to remove super administrators from having permission to delete items. My thinking is: Why does he want that? Because he doesn't want anyone deleting content. So we have two options - the first being to add a setting that removes the delete option for everyone or we can introduce better permission handling for super moderators. In this case, we've discussed better permission handling for super moderators so this is likely what we'll do - but it's a fairly large change so it won't be a minor point release. Thus, we'll not look at adding a setting because it would be removed in a future version and just cause confusion. Thanks for responding to the suggestion there, Matt. However, about halfway down the first page of the 'Disallow Permanent Deletion' topic, I suggested the addition of a post revision history as a means of keeping an audit trail (it's not the first time I or someone else has suggested it, either). Pretty much the rest of the topic then focuses on that idea. We now know that you've taken nrep's original suggestion for super moderator deletion permissions into account. However, you didn't comment at all on the idea of post revision tracking - when you "processed" the topic, did you consider that as well, or did you only look at the idea nrep proposed in the first post? It can happen that a request for one feature may lead to the suggestion of another, so a single topic may contain requests for more than one addition/change to the software.
Aisha Posted September 1, 2011 Posted September 1, 2011 I can't see how posting that dozens of times a day is anything short of a complete waste of time :wink: If I reply to 200 feedback topics in a day and can do that in one minute each (which is near impossible, because I have to read the topic first too...) that's 200 minutes every day not spent developing. Just saying... I hardly ever see more than 1 or 2 new feedback topics a day...
• Jay • Posted September 5, 2011 Posted September 5, 2011 I hardly ever see more than 1 or 2 new feedback topics a day... So you just want them to answer the feedback forum you like? What about the rest? If they start replying to all the topics in this forum, people will also expect the same for the subforums.
Aisha Posted September 5, 2011 Posted September 5, 2011 So you just want them to answer the feedback forum you like? What about the rest? No..where did I say that?
• Jay • Posted September 6, 2011 Posted September 6, 2011 No..where did I say that? Well there's more than 1-2 new topics a day when you look at more than one forum. And then of course there are follow-ups where people will have questions about what a dev may have to say, and then there's corrections on misunderstandings of stated posts. It's not as simple as you make it out to be.
bfarber Posted September 6, 2011 Posted September 6, 2011 I had roughly 60 updated/new topics today in the feedback forums.
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