OT: Votes or pledges?

[kkjensen]

I've seen a couple different models employed by different groups/companies to collect the opinions from users about what is important to them.

The first uses pledges. As a user I might spend XX number of hours trying to do something see a need for a particular improvement. In the "I'll pay money!" frame of mind they decide they would be willing to spend $10-20 for a plug-in (or whatever solution makes itself available) to make life easier. Logged in users could make a pledge towards the development of a feature and pay when it was implemented and functional. This was a solution on a linux game site a while ago where devs could earn extra beer money (since the software itself was open source).

And the second method was another system by uservoice (seen here: http://strobox.uservoice.com/forums/32308-iphone-app) is a forum with votes. Each registered user gets a fixed amount of votes. One or more vote can be cast towards any open item. You can choose to put all your votes to one item or scatter them about as you please. I guess these votes could be cast towards bugs, camera support or whatever you see fit.

I've used both methods and think each has it's strength and appropriate place.

Pledges: Pros: A bunch of people all pledging $5-10 probably gets more attention than a bunch of people complaining. Not only does it give a good measure of what people want the most, it also provided some serious beer money to the devs that put in a little extra time at the end of the day. I vaguely recall reading that the pledges were distributed among the devs depending on their contribution to the work. Pledgers can see the open issues and the total pledged amount to make it easier to pledge effectively. Later they are sent a notification about the item being opened/closed and friendly reminder someone worked extra and would appreciate you honoring your pledge. These pledges were for the addition of EXTRA fuctionality, above and beyond what you've already paid. As a side note I guess this sort of thing could be useful for plug-in devs also. CONS: 1. Honor system based. Some will say "I'd pay $1000 for this!" and back pedal once it happens. Also, there's always some that will argue that they paid already and I doubt they would ever use such a system...

Votes: PROS Could be used to make a measurable difference to help direct debugging, plug-in developmeent, etc. An active community of users can (without paying more) help tally their opinions about whatever issue gets posted. Personally I like this approach as it unifies the many opinions on a subject under fewer headings. CONS: I don't know if something like this could be added to a phpBB without too much coding (or if someone else has already done it). Some first picks seem to come close: http://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/vote_manager/


In any case, neither solution really gets much done in a user-driven community forum. There needs to be some form of connection to the core devs. Plug-ins could be based on public opinion but this doesn't help much when it comes to bugs or interface concerns.


My reason for posting this epistle is simply in response to the other threads voicing disatisfaction with this forum's format and content. Sub-forums would be a start but if Corel is


We've all added +1 posts to gigantic threads but I really doubt if those ever get tallied up. If you wanted your opinion counted, which method would you choose?

[claudermilk]

I've seen the votes system used for some Android apps. It seems to work pretty well; it would give both the developers and users a sense of what features are most desired.