If you haven't visited yet, MS Connect replaces the old sqlwish email alias and provides - in theory! - a better way to manage problems and suggestions. One of the features they've implemented is to let visitors vote on which suggestions/bugs they want fixed. I like the idea of community involvement, but I think this implementation has some challenges:
- Most of us don't go looking for things to vote on, so I think only a very small subset of the community is seeing/voting on these issues. Are they a representative sample??
- You can vote yea or nay (rate it from 1-5 that is), but there is no way to prioritize the fixes. Heck, I want them ALL fixed, but what they need is help prioritizing across features.
- Voting on the issues has lead it to become a bit of a content. My friend Steve Jones is lobbying for SQL 2005 SP3, others are lobbying for things like backups that don't include indexes. Entirely human to lobby for your ideas, but without the context of seeing all the ideas we're back to the prioritization problem.
In the spirit of not complaining without at least trying to offer some alternatives, these might tweak the system to be more effective:
- All suggestions stay open for 90 days for voting. At the end of that period anyone who voted on any item within that window gets the entire list to review and prioritize. That lets us vote for a favorite feature/fix or two, and play fair about deciding if x is more important than y. The 90 days also gives plenty of time for discussion of pro/con.
- Push that same list to all the major communities, try to get a broader group of people to weigh in on the final voting.
- Maybe RSS feeds so we can all easily see new stuff added that news review/vote.
Not sure my fixes are the best way, but helps to illustrate where I think the community can add more value.
