Re: Managing the community information stream

On May 6, 2007, at 8:18 AM, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> Oh, the answer to Bruce's question about when to create a feature
> item? You could well do it at the time when today you create a TODO
> item. However, we might even do better. For example, we might well
> add feature requests that are denied. That would help people to see
> if something has been proposed before.

The problem with our current TODO process is that whether an item
makes it onto the list is essentially determined by did the idea
catch a committer's attention, and did that committer happen to think
it was a good idea. That sets the bar pretty high for getting stuff
on the list (which you need for a simple list like TODO), but it also
means it's very subjective. (Of course 98% of the time that committer
is Bruce, but I don't think that matters here...)

The subjectivity is because we don't have an effective means to get
information about how PostgreSQL is used in the field. Sometimes you
can mine that information out of the archives, but that's a pretty
tedious process (and therefor one that's unlikely to happen). But
that's also not necessarily representative... many people will try
and find an answer to something on their own and not post anything to
the lists at all, even if the 'answer' they find isn't very optimal.

Instead, if all feature requests are tracked then users can vote on
what's most important to them. That provides immediate feedback to
the community on how important something is to the users. http://
lnk.nu/bugzilla.mozilla.org/edc.cgi is an example of that for Firefox.
--
Jim Nasby jim(at)nasby(dot)net
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell)