Democratic Workshop as an alternative to "Feature Suggestions" forum

While it's certainly true that the Lindens browse through these feature requests very often, the question remains: how to prioritize the features/bug fixes that the residents propose/demand?

Traditionally there are two ways of doing it:

1) Do the ones needing less work first. This means the next release will have lots of small new features/bug fixes, and at least a big part of the residents will be happy.

2) Do the ones that most residents demand. This means concentrating at 1 or 2 features for the next release, but the net result would also be a lot of happy residents.

However, the question is: with limited programming resources available, how to address the issue of prioritizing new features? How do you measure "interest" in them? With 15,000 players, and 100 replying on a thread "I want this feature TOO!", is this really a way to measure interest in that feature? (after all, less than 1% of the residents "demanded" it...)

One possible answer would be having some sort of voting system online where people would be able to submit features and vote on them.

A much bettter solution is provided by a French company called Myriad who develops a music notation & composition system. They have a very large community using it since they replicate the features of a USD $500 program (the state-of-the-art in musical notation) into a shareware solution with works for Windows and Macs. Now since they're NOT ready for releasing it into the open source, what they came up with instead is the Democratic Workshop. How does it work?

Well, think of a forum + voting system combined. People make fully detailed proposals on features they want to see on the next version. A proposal is submitted much more formally than here in this "Feature Suggestions" forum - since the company behind the software needs to transform the proposals into work assignments to the programmers. Then there is a discussion part - the users evaluate the proposals themselves, and argue pro or con against them, in some cases completely changing (or even removing) the original proposal. At this time, the proposed feature already gets a classification and an ID and is submitted to the programmers for review - sometimes they reply by saying "it's impossible" or "it would be possible if you change this or that thing". The proposals are all classified according to difficulty of implementation. Finally, it comes to "voting day" - every registered user interested in the software reviews each others' features, and vote upon them. There is about a new release every month or so, and 50 or so new features on each release (many are tiny details).

There is no "guarantee" that the programmers will keep to the priority list, but it certainly makes the software evolve towards what most users really want, instead of what the company's perception of the priorities are. If you read about how the Myriad Democratic Workshop works, you'll see it's pretty low-tech stuff - basically specially formatted emails, no "fancy" software needed to implement it, so it's very easy to setup.

One OTHER alternative, of course, would be releasing parts of LL's software into Open Source and let the crafty programmers work wonders on it, in a, uh - "implement your own favourite features" fashion, and submit the code back to LL for approval. But I guess we're still far from that. LL made the (correct) transition from thinking themselves as a "game developer/content provider" company into a "game hosting provider". Taking the next step - releasing the code as open source and acting as "game hosting provider + code project management + technical support", but without securing the code as proprietary technology, would be a too large step for a relatively small company... but it would be a very interesting step! Imagine how that would look to the competition, specially those Big Giants who dominate the world with proprietary software...

For an example on how a 3D world could evolve as Open Source, take a look at VegaStrike. It's not yet a fully multiplayer game, and it's completely different from SL, but it has some of its elements: you design objects offworld (spaceships in this case), you can do scripts to animate objects, you can create lots of stuff and upload it to the game, and the game works well under Windows, Mac or Linux since it's also based on OpenGL. It has a few years of development, there is no company behind it, just lots of very creative graphical designers to do the modelling and programming veterans to rough out the code. Surely there are more examples around, and I have seen at least two "open source MMORPGs" in the forge, but development is still very early on those.

Open Source would kick ass... A few years ago a small group of us was looking for a new VR home and trying to figure out a way for that to work, and I had actually drafted a few different flowcharts as to how that might work with programs such as SL... take a look here:

http://memeticdrift.net:8080/refs/60

and some other ideas here:
http://memeticdrift.net:8080/refs/50


Actually, Activeworlds did a "feature Vote" a few years back. They took the top maybe 10 most often requested feature enhancements and stuck em up on a webpage, and each citizen number got a vote.

Prioritizing is definitely the most difficult aspect of this. There's lots of cleaver folks in the SL community and among the various Lindens to make something work!

Peace and Happy Building,

Arti

I've been whining about a feature voting script for ages... It's not that hard to setup. I've been toying with the idea of making one in SL.

This is a very interesting topic, but almost everything about it depends entirely on LL's plan for the future of SL. It's no good talking about voting for features if LL does not plan to let player's wishes drive SL's evolution in any really strong way.

The example you gave Gwyneth worked for Myriad because quite clearly the most important thing in their vision was to satisfy customer requirements, and an open democratic process for prioritizing the wishlist is clearly one of the best ways of satisfying as many people as possible.

That's very good, but it wouldn't work in the absence of an official company policy to endorse the concept of customer-led evolution.

While LL clearly paid a lot of attention to players in the initial days of SL, it's debateable whether that amounts to a corporate policy for involving the customer in direction steering. And in more recent times, Feature Suggestions appears to be the forum most avoided rather than most frequented by LL staff.

What you've described is a very powerful solution to several problems, especially in conjunction with some open-source development to increase the available dev resources. However, is LL even remotely interested in releasing the reigns of absolute control? Only they can answer that, but they barely talk to us. The signs aren't too encouraging.

Just one thing to add to that, Gwyneth. The metaverse that succeeds will be the one that is most accomodating of community wishes, and the one that harnesses the immense development power of the community, and the one that delivers the mechanisms that allow the unhindered vision of the community to flourish. Competing against that will be pretty much impossible.

I've got an idea.

We could scrape the Features Suggestions forum with a simple script and create an auto-generated web page showing the interval between Linden comments, the ratio of customer to Linden posts, the number of different feature requests, the repetition of feature requests in new threads out of sheer exasperation, and, with some manual effort, the number of features requested that are actually implemented.

Or we could just guess of course, but a fact-finding forum scraper would provide weight to the argument and substantiate our pessimism.

Hello Morgaine,

Well now that we know Philip's ideas, I think that things will move smoothly more according our (the players') wishes.

I have a few additional thoughts on that at my blog (ok, apologies for my shameless plug).

It's strange that some of your own phrasing almost mirror Philip's own Are you his alt?

LOL. I'm afraid not, or my bank balance would be healthier.

Mind you, I'm both a futurist and a totally undeterred technologist, so I probably share his worldview. And on top of that I'm an engineer with feet firmly planted on the ground, and I see no conflict, because where there is a will there is always a way.

The main hindrance to progress seems to be people who delight in arguing why things simply cannot be done. There is a nasty label that can be applied to them, but it's better just to ignore them instead. People like Philip Rosedale and Mitch Kapor get things done because they ignore detractors, and find solutions. That's something that appeals to me immensely.

Awww so true, Morgaine!

*bows to her knees in reverence*

You're totally right, you have me heart and soul with you on that. I have been talking to several residents - old and new (in age), oldies and newbies (in SL playing) - and my conclusion is simply the following:

Less than 0.5% have had a business experience with managing projects or people. These handful are the ones who drool with Philip's and Mitch's visions. They know what can be done and are excited that LL *is* doing it. They understand that you can't fix 25758 bugs in one week with just a handful of core programmers (7 or . What's important is not the bug-fix-per-day-per-programmer rate, but how LL sees SL evolve in the next 3 or 5 years, and what steps they will take to "get there".

The remaining 99.5% have the typical consumer expectation attitude of "I couldn't care less, I'm a consumer of this entertaining game and I pay my US$ 6 (or so) per month to play, so I demand that those 25728 bugs are fixed by the end of the week, or I'll quit this silly game because LL stinks as a company"

There is no point in trying to "educate" the community. They simply haven't the experience to appreciate LL's work. Your desciption of "I'm an engineer with feet firmly planted on the ground" shows precisely the right attitude that 99.5% of the residents simply don't have

However, there is also a way not to "ignore detractors" and make them feel they are participating on the "decision making" (even if they really don't care about LL's "visions" at all). I feel encouraged to suggest something like the "Democratic Workshop" to the Lindens, as Phil really seems to believe that the game "should be put into the creative residents' hands as much as possible". Helping to prioritize bugs according to the importance residents give to them seems to be a self-assumed problem at LL - look at the way they post the job offer for QA at their own site:



Notice the wording?

Ah yes. And this job offer has been around since July 15th.

Now imagine if the current QA engineers would be able to have a tool like the Democratic Workshop to aid them prioritizing stuff according to residents' views on importance AND having "feet firmly planted on the ground" to know what's feasible and important to accomplish LL's vision

- Gwyneth (a "kindred spirit" )

Wow, Gwyn, you really thought all of this out.

I overlook the obvious so I'm pleased when I discover an obvious feature that should be in the program, but isn't (for whatever reason). It makes economical, not to mention practical sense, to first focus on the features that are clamored for the most -- not to mention, would have the most impact on a wide-ranging diversity of people. Even without detailed statistics and voting, however, experience listening to other users will bring out certain "buzz" and common trends in what is eagerly anticipated, next.

The more esoteric stuff is like the finer gears in the machine... still important and necessary. More word may have to get about these because if one is unaware if the importance of an underlying yet crucial feature -- how can one vote for it? That awareness is essential.

However, it can be the everyday annoyances that get to you, like a simple toggle switch for the typing and BOINK! interface sounds perhaps, and other things I know I've listed before which seem simple to do. Of course, multiple-item drag-and-drop is another, and it was great to hear Philip address this.

Sometimes, the biggest things are the littlest.

Oh yeah, that and Maxthon (like IE ultra) has a great support forum for their new features... check it out:

http://forum.maxthon.com/forum/index.php

While I was rambling in the forums, Azelda Garcia set up exactly what I proposed: a site to post new features and vote upon them: The Second Life Feature Voting.

Azelda is currently lobbying for the Lindens to understand the concept and accept it

The current version has some tricky stuff to authenticate your AV, but with some Linden support, I guess that this could be also directly integrated into their own authentication systems.

Great work, Azelda! /clap

Transgaming.com uses a voting system for collecting their customers' thoughts.
It is a forum + vote script. I would like to see something like that here as well.

They pick the topics to add to the vote, and each month, they run new a new poll and the results drive where they put the development effort.

There are two sections: New Features and Improvements
Improvements are basically things that should work better.

As long as LL controls what is polled on, it should work fine.
This is what they *could* do, and the subscribers could have their say of what they would like to see done most.

In Transgaming case, there is always more work than they have developers for.
So, at least they know what the top interest is and are able to work towards that.

I would like to suggest LL take a look at how another subscription service is handling the voting + forum idea and see if it could be adapted here.

Ah, Gwyneth while other people complain about problems you come up with solutions.

Yes, rather than LL sanctioned advisory councils a better and more democratic feedback solution is needed.

I am strongly in favor of this. A voting system similar to what Azelda is doing would be a great idea, though I'm unsure that doing it on an external website is a good idea.

Thanks for your nice words, Blaze As a matter of fact, I never complain about stuff that I feel is wrong. First, I try to think it over to understand why it's wrong. And secondly, I try to suggest a way to fix it. From there one, people will add their input and do a much better job than me to "flesh out" things.

Actually, this is what I do in RW as well

Back to the "feature voting list", I imagine it being only as a "guideline" for the Lindens to prioritize their own work - nothing more. Allen words it quite right: this would be a poll system for proiritizing current things LL is *willing* to do, and eventually allowing new things to be proposed - also according to a certain priority - that the residents would like to see implemented, but without any guarantees that they would ever be considered.

And yes, the next step would be to incorporate it into SL's main Web sites, and make it official. This is what Azelda is trying to do. Actually, I posted this in the forums, to try to gather more support So, grab your favourite Linden in SL, and point them to Azelda's work