Suggestions Process

This page documents how user suggestions are incorporated into the codebase.

Submitting a Suggestion

Users go to the suggestions area and fill out the form.

A staff member (usually denise) reviews the suggestion for basic sensibility ("I want a pony of my very own" is not going to pass; "I think the homepage should be updated to include the following list of features:" is likely to), whether it is a suggestion for a new feature/enhancement or something that should go elsewhere, whether or not this feature already exists, whether or not the feature is already planned (has a bug filed), whether or not there is an existing discussion on the topic.

Items that do not pass the review on any of the criteria are rejected with a note about why (and sometimes instructions for getting the idea to the right place, if it's a good idea but the dw_suggestions community is not the right place for it).

Community Discussion

Suggestions are posted publicly to the dw_suggestions community, where all Dreamwidth users (and OpenID users) may discuss the merits and drawbacks of the suggestion, and propose changes to make the suggestion work better for the site as a whole.

A poll is automatically included with every suggestion, to provide a quick way to give feedback and to see what the general feeling about the suggestion is quickly.

Staff Review

After there has been discussion, staff periodically reviews suggestions and decides whether or not the suggestion should be approved for implementation. Discussion and poll votes are taken into account, but staff members have the final decision, and may decline to implement very popular suggestions, or implement suggestions that have a substantial amount of disagreement if they feel it can be done in an acceptable way, or if it needs to be done for the well-being of the site and users.

Suggestions that have been reviewed by staff are tagged appropriately. Suggestions that will not be implemented are left in place, as the discussion is worth preservation and can be useful the next time the same idea is proposed.

Migration to Bugzilla

When a suggestion is approved for implementation, a staff member is able to quickly and easily send a copy of the suggestion as it was originally submitted to Bugzilla, with a link to the dw_suggestions discussion. The bug is tagged, given a priority, and evaluated for difficulty.

Implementation

In addition to staff working on bugs, other developers can choose from the available items in Bugzilla.