JIRA Votes... do they actually matter?

Due to another thread, I was on the JIRA voting for a few issues, and noticed that the 'Terminate all AC blahblahblah' one has a TON of votes. ( http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-2727 )

3,716 votes, as of right now... I got curious, and checked the 'popular issues' bit... and this is the second most voted-on issue in the JIRA.

The first, is the Open Sim Pricing protest one, which has 4,128 votes. ( http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1776 ).

Now... this didn't seem odd until I looked a little further into it... the Open Sim issue has been open for 6 months. The AC one has been open..let's see, now.... not quite three weeks. A big difference there, eh?

After the AC one, the next highest voted issue is at 500, regarding failed delivery of items, which isn't a constant issue, but rather recurring. As far as I can tell, these three aren't the top-voted just for Open Issues, but all of them, resolved or otherwise.

So.. in a matter of weeks, we've garnered almost as many votes as the second has done in 6 months... that's quite impressive, in my mind. Not only that, but it obviously shows that the protesters are by no means the majority. Both of these issues (Both of which are quite controversial, in some way or another) have more than 7 times the votes of the next highest, and yet they have remained ignored.

The Open Sim issue has been commented on by a Linden exactly 0 times. The AC issue has been commented on by a Linden once, and that was just a reprimand for language, or something similar.

Yes, we've had brown bags, and office hours, and so on, on both situations, but it seems to me that they are completely ignoring the JIRA, the tool they've touted as such an important resource, both for feature requests and bug reporting.

So, that was a bit of a ramble, I'll be honest. But now, I have a serious question:

Does the vote count have any effect, whatsoever, on getting noticed by the Lindens?

I think how critical the issue is carries more weight than jira votes. For example, do we fix the "sim crash bug if you walk" first, or the "texture flickers once in a blue moon of this oddball set of parameters are set" first. Obviously, the sim crashing bug is going to get the attention. Beyond that, I think jira votes are used to determine which ones should be tackled first. In other words, two separate, but about equal bugs, but one has many more jira votes will get tackled first.

A good example is I once found a way to crash a sim quite easily. (Actually, a friend did), and the issue was posted in the jira. I brought it up at an office hours meeting with Andrew and Simon Linden, and right there on the spot (on a test sim), Simon was able to repeat the sim crash, and came back and said "whoa, we need to get that fixed". They then pushed that up the list, and it was fixed fairly fast.

So, the short answer is yes, and no. Also, I'm sure any stupid issues (and there are some), are simply ignored regardless of how many votes it gets. I'm sure they also take into account people who go around advertising stupid jira posts begging people to vote for them, which happens as well.

Voting is simply a way for the techies to see what people want fixed. They're still free to work on what they want, when they want, and are under no obligation to tackle issues from top votes to bottom votes. It's just there to help them see what issues the most people are complaining about. Also, they probably take into consideration the fact that some people game the system (what else is new...) and vote alot with bots and such. They probably know who these people are because they're the same ones that show up at office hour meetings and whine the entire time about the same issue that has far more votes than any other.

Well, there's no Linden assigned to it and the only comment from LL is to make sure we follow JIRA guidelines.

I think that pretty much answers your question..

Jiras created to change policy that is set in stone will be ignored. Votes or no votes they still have the final decision of what gets worked.
Protests are not valid JIRAs.

Votes probably don't matter but the comments do. Careful what you say or you'll get banned from SL for 2 weeks like this guy: http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/05/oops-i-take-that-back-jira-defeat.html

There was a reaction on the linked Jira, that was to remove "Ladyboy" from the list of filtered words: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-2736

Make your guesses why this was resolved, without having a Linden assigned to it.

Pretty much seems that way. JIRAs tend to be for technical stuff, not policy stuff. Last time I saw a "policy" JIRA taken with any seriousness was SL5B. Whether that's right or wrong, I dunno.

They don't care about JIRA issues related to technical stuff set in stone either, see MISC-2723. I actually got a one day suspension referencing that JIRA, despite being more "courteous" than the Lindens themselves. That particular issue doesn't have a lot of votes, but that's because the Lindens keep closing it. They don't care what they mess up. When the creative powers of Luskwood, Grendel's Children, Nargus Labs, Werehouse, Seawolf, Dragon Keep Creations, Magican Productions, and a bunch of smaller avatar makers all agree that something related to content creation is an issue, and LL says it's not, you know something's wrong.

Personally, I don't usually bring things to LL's attention with the expectation that they'll fix it. I just make myself heard, make it clear that I won't accept, as Barney so aptly put it, "no, bugger off" as an answer. Sometimes victory comes not from having an issue solved, but from being proved right. I foresee several current issues achieving such victories.

Simple answer: No

Slightly less terse answer: It depends on whether the Lindens already have it on their radar or not. If it isn't sponsored by a Linden, or goes against something else they already have in the works, or are doing, it likely won't get any Linden attention whatsoever.

Additional comment:

"Voting" for bugs to be fixed has to be one of the lamest ideas in SCM (Software Change Management) history. It's a bug. Triage it, then fix it. User "voting" is NO substitute for proper bug triage. It's a lazy-programmer's excuse-waiting-to-happen.

I am amused that I see this topic as I look at http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-156 - "BBCode not working on official SL Forums", originally posted June 2007 by someone not very far away from this post.