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...Please create a request in the feature voting tool...

Travis Lambert
White dog, red collar
Join date: 3 Jun 2004
Posts: 2,819
06-12-2006 12:13
"Please create a request in the feature voting tool" appears to be the common response when someone requests that a minor (or major) feature be added.

When you make this suggestion to residents, it seems to imply a covenant that if we do the work on our end (get the community to support a vote proposal), you'll do your part (implement it if its feasable).

Jiggly Puff made an Answer's post, to which Kelly responded:

From: Kelly Linden
These functions are not currently planned for development. However they, or similar functions, are feasible. If you have not already done so, please create a request in the feature voting tool and get some feedback from fellow residents in the feature suggestion forum.


Proposition 595 asks for these LSL functions that Jiggly asked for, and was submitted in September of 2005. That feature request apparently didn't receive enough votes from the community to receive consideration from Linden.

Proposition 244 was submitted in April of 2005 (14 months ago), received significant response from the community, and was "Acknowledged by Linden". I spent months expending a great deal of energy making sure folks were aware of the proposal, and encouraging votes.

After all that effort, we still seem to be nowhere with proposition 244. I feel like I wasted my time and energy in pushing for it - and seeing someone else being asked to go down this same road is disheartening to me.

Recently added functions like llListStatistics() are very cool. However, it doesn't seem to be as a direct result of the voting tool. Instead, it appears that a developer thought it might be cool, and added it. (If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me :D) What made that function more important than those asked for in Prop 595?

I know you're being asked to do too much with too little. But the voting tool seems more like a way to put us off your back rather than a constructive feature request mechanism.

Any changes planned for the voting tool in the future? (Please don't ask me to submit a vote proposal on that :D)

And when will we see an encouraging yellow "D" (in development) icon next to Prop 244? :)
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Kelly Linden
Linden Developer
Join date: 29 Mar 2004
Posts: 896
06-12-2006 14:56
Irony of ironies, I added llListStatistics.

I will admit that I do not personally look at the feature voting tool. And I have previously inquired as to what we do actually do with the feature voting tool. All features that get 'enough' support get some action by us. Either it gets added to our internal list, gets commented in the feature suggestions or something else. The support gained is used to give the task priority.

However, it is not the only measure of priority. There are many issues that will never end up on the voting tool that are very high priority. Scalability, while it has been on the feature proposal system in a general sense, has many specific internally visible features that often get very high priority. My next project after Group Roles falls in this category. And if it works no one will even know it happened.

Other times the feature proposal tool, along with other community feedback, is used to design a feature that can be implemented in a specific amount of time, with a specific amount of developer resources, that addresses some of the core issues raised. The Group Roles features that I have discussed previously are a good example of this. They were designed internally with the help of our Community team who had gathered the feedback from the Feature Vote tool and elsewhere. While the feature being implemented doesn't exactly match any of the proposals we believe it addresses many of the core issues (though not all), and was definitely influenced by those issues in the feature vote tool.

We have other projects that have similar status, and the feature vote tool offers a good way for us to find out what people want from the system. It will probably be rare that a feature is implemented exactly as proposed, but the feedback is definitely used and the votes do help effect the prioritization of tasks.

llGetListStatistics was a side project of mine. It is possible that the proposed group lsl features will end up in a similar fashion.

The feature vote tool is far from perfect. It isn't the only source of features, not all get implemented or even commented on, not every linden reads them and there are possibly better voting schemes. However it is still the best avenue to garner support and get official notice from Linden regarding a feature request. Just because a feature hasn't been implemented doesn't mean we havn't noticed it.

As for the features you suggested, only the first relates to the recent hotline posts, and as you said it has not garnered that much support. Prop 244 is a significant project and is actually on the forefront of our thinking lately although it is not actually in development yet.

I don't know if this addressed any of your concerns. However I made sure that there was a process in place regarding the Feature Proposal tool before suggesting that residents post there. I believe highly supported features in the vote tool do get more visibility internally than any other method of feature requesting. Corresponding feature threads on the forums can help as well. I have been convinced that this is really less of a brush off than 'good idea, we will look into'. It has similar meaning but there is more follow through with the voting tool. :-/ Like I said, not perfect.

If you want to discuss this more, feel free to email me directly: [email]kelly@lindenlab.com[/email]
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- Kelly Linden