[Administrative] Rethinking the roadmap and the voting system

[CintaNotes Developer]

Guys,

after the new version is finally out, I think it's time to reflect a little bit.
The sad truth about the current feature voting system is that it's not really working because it requires a lot of maintenance. It requires manual calculation and compilation of the votes and building the charts which I am a bit too lazy to do on the regular basis. Also the roadmap post is very difficult to keep up-to-date.
So the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we really need a specialized solution. This is why I wanted to suggest trying to use an external service for that. It would allow everyone to see the feature and bugs list with rankings in real-time.
Of course the voting system there is not as flexible as ours, but it still allows up- and down voting, which should be alright. Moving to this new system would also allow us to vote for bugs, which would be really cool.

I've transferred the roadmap into one such system:

http://cintanotes.userecho.com

Please take a look and tell what you think. I'd also like to discuss if we want to move the entire Feature Requests and Bugs forums there, or use this service just for voting. Thanks.

[Midas]

Whatever works for you, Alex, really.

But I do reckon that moving development feedback over to UserEcho will dilute CintaNotes opinion stream and brand awareness.

P.S.: have you considered Trac and such?

http://trac.edgewall.org/

[CintaNotes Developer]

Well, I'm using Trac myself as internal bug/issue tracker. But I think that making it public will dilute the brand recognition even more, it is, after all, more developer-oriented. And even with the voting extension I doubt that it would be as usable as a specialized service.

But I want to consider all pros and cons so that we could make a good decision. Now the options that we have are:

1) Keep the system as is
2) Fully migrate to a specialized site like UserEcho (UserVoice, GetSatisfaction)
3) Use a specialized site like a public roadmap, but keep discussions here
4) Some web-server installable solution (Trac?)
5) Custom-made solution
6) Something else?

[ale]

I don't know which is the best solution but here's some random thoughts...

I think services like UserEcho, Get Satisfaction and so forth, do not promote interaction between users, a forum like phpBB is more suited to such kind of interaction. To my eyes they are more a kind of fancy help desk than a place to talk so to tell the truth I'm doubtful about moving entire subforums there. If however they are useful to solve the voting problem, I agree with Midas, choose whatever works best, give it a try and see how it goes.

I think I saw at least a project that moved to a hosted solution like Get Satisfaction however, later, they went back to an in-house solution, but I don't know the reasons. Finally a service may always be discontinued or disappear "tomorrow" and an escape plan is needed

I don't know Trac specifically, but the problem with bugtrackers is that they are too complex, they are a tool made by developers for "developers". But given that for any project simple users are 95% of the total and technical oriented people are maybe 5%, they often do not work well. A simple user that wants to report a bug does not want to be bothered with questions, with priorities, with severities, duplicates... he just wants to say in plain english to another person he/she has a problem.

(finally I did not write elsewhere yet so, Alex, thanks for CintaNotes 1.1 release)

[Noddy330]

I’m with the other posters on this – use what works for you
If it were me
- I’d want something simple and low maintenance.
- On proposed features I’d just want to know if they were popular or unpopular –I like the Dropbox VoteBox system.
Nod

[kranor]

I like the voting, but I am wary of moving the roadmap and voting away from the current forum...

[Midas]

Can I use Google Code to host projects that aren't open source?

Nope. Open source projects only.

Shame Google Project Hosting is restricted to OSS, since the interface seems very clean and straightforward, with wiki, download archive, issue tracker, etc.

[Noddy330]

I like everything in one location.
Nod

[CintaNotes Developer]

Guys, thanks for your opinion!

Yes I too would prefer to have everything in one place, but the transparency of having the roadmap on a
specialized service is really hard to resist. Moreover the guys from UserEcho have offered me a power plan
for free, so I'll be able to use tags and other nifty features.

I also like the VoteBox very much, but as far as I know they just use it themselves and don't offer it as a
product, so this is not an option.
I've made a simple decision table here:

	Functionality (*3)	Branding (*2)	Keeping control (*2)	Easyness (*1)	Total weighted points
Custom-made solution	3	3	3	1	22
Use a specialized site like a public roadmap, but keep discussions here	3	2	2	3	20
Some web-server installable solution	2	3	3	2	20
Keep the system as is	1	3	3	3	18
Fully migrate to a specialized site like UserEcho	3	1	1	3	16

But of course this thing is very debatable

[Midas]

Just noting some resources:

http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/9-free-and-open-source-bug-tracking-softwares/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue-tracking_systems

http://dcl.sourceforge.net/

http://www.redmine.org/

http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/

http://dev.libresource.org/

http://www.dotproject.net/

[CintaNotes Developer]

Last time I checked Bugzilla had horrible UI, practically impenetrable for non-geeks

[Midas]

I see. Let's just strike it out then...

BTW, love that table.

[Noddy330]

Alex
I’d go with your gut feel on what seems right for you and CintaNotes.
The voting system on UserEcho seems ok to me.
Nod

[CintaNotes Developer]

Well my gut feeling is telling me that of course custom made solution would be best, but the time invested in it would be stolen from CintaNotes. So I think using UserEcho as a public issue tracker and roadmap should be fine.
Of course there's a possibility that UserEcho might evaporate, but hey it's not that we are risking our codebase here.

For the time being, we will use it just for voting and for keeping track of the issues. All discussions will take place here, and there will be links pointing to the corresponding thread in each UserEcho issue, and vice versa.
Let's see how it goes.

[Noddy330]

Sounds ok to me
Will you include a link to UserEcho in the help menu - alongside Webiste & Forum?
Nod

[Midas]

Roger!

[CintaNotes Developer]

Will you include a link to UserEcho in the help menu - alongside Webiste & Forum?

I don't know if I really should do this, the users will start to register on UserEcho and post suggestions directly there.
For the time being I'd prefer for UserEcho just to be a public issue tracker with voting system.

Ok so here are the next steps to do for me:

1) Rewrite forum rules. The interesting thing here would be that only the features having no more negative votes than {positive votes}/2 get implemented first. This will ensure that uncontroversial features get a head start.
2) In the "Roadmap" forum topic, remove the roadmap table and put a link to cintanotes.userecho.com.
3) Grant our moderators permission to edit things on userecho.
4) Make sure that all bugs and feature requests having positive vote balance (or where there was no poll and wasn't an explicit decline either) have an entry on UserEcho

For the moderators:
1) Please register on cintanotes.userecho.com and give me your credentials so that I can grant you the needed permissions.
2) Unfortunately we won't be able to completely avoid having people posting suggestions directly on UserEcho. I don't think that we should prohibit this. Any feedback should be welcome. So your task will be merging duplicates and tagging.

Thanks for all the support, guys! Hopefully this will give us a convenient and transparent tool for managing the direction of development. And this will mean having better and more useful CintaNotes in shorter time

[Noddy330]

I think to ensure consistency / no duplication etc it would be best if only the mods etc posted to UE.
How about - update the rules to say - only mods can post to UE - any other ideas etc submitted to UE will be deleted by the mods.
Harsh, but effective. Nod

[CintaNotes Developer]

I think to ensure consistency / no duplication etc it would be best if only the mods etc posted to UE.
How about - update the rules to say - only mods can post to UE - any other ideas etc submitted to UE will be deleted by the mods.
Harsh, but effective. Nod

I agree this is effective, but do you really think that people after seeing their post deleted will go to the Feature Requests forum and repost there? I don't think so, and we will be losing feedback. And asking mods to do that is a bit too much imho. Any ideas here, everyone?

[Midas]

Done as instructed -- I'm now user Midas at UserEcho too. Please delete my post in thanks section.