The state of the Feature Suggestions forum

[Graf Zahl]

This forum has been active for only a few days and yet already there is too much useless garbage. It has developed exactly as predicted.

IMO this forum needs very strict guidelines and those guidelines need to be enforced because otherwise all that will remain is a pile of garbage with a few good ideas lost within it. I'd really hate to see that happen. But it will happen if this place remains unmoderated and doesn't get any feedback from the developer (i.e. Randy).

So what guidelines?

I think the most important one should be:

Think about the usability of your feature. Is it just something that may be useful to save you some very specific work on your latest project or is it something that can be put to good use for general mapping.
Also think a little about the time that may be required to implement something. Spending a lot of time on implementing features nobody uses is a huge waste!

Here are some that IMO violate that rule.

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=5581
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=5583
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=5500
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=5663
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=5671

(I didn't look at everything but some of the other ideas are probably not worth pursuing as well)

Of course equally important:

Don't post any nonsense here!

And here are the offenders:

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=5560
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=5570

Of course Randy should briefly outline what kinds of suggestions he deems acceptable and which not.

[Chilvence]

I second that motion and call for a sticky

[David Ferstat]

Sticky time.

[Xaser]

I agree with all this. We have bug posting guidelines, so why not feature suggestion guidelines?

[Sticky]

Here I am. What can I do for you? Oh, nevermind.... I see....

[Tormentor667]

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=5570

I knew I would burn in hell for this (sorry)

[skadoomer]

I agree with all this. We have bug posting guidelines, so why not feature suggestion guidelines?

1) no feature requests should be made to benifit individual projects, the request should benifit the comminity as a whole to either a) fix, b) simplify (this is pretty vague, i know) or c) Expand zdoom in a REASONABLE and REALISTIC mannor.

1a) Concerning Simplifing, I find that if something can be done in acs, then it probabily should not be feature requested. The obvious exception here is stuff like weather effects, which are currently nothing more than resource hogging drains on most systems.

2) Posts in the feature request should outline why this feature should be added and the parameters (if applicable) that will be used.

Feel free to expand on this, these where just a few ideas i had.

[Graf Zahl]

Sorry, I couldn't resist to add the recent nonsense to the list in the first post!

[Chris]

Sorry, I couldn't resist to add the recent nonsense to the list in the first post!

Yes, don't miss the opportunity to whine about it some more. I'm quite sure Randy can find it on his own, he's a big boy. And that exclamation point just made it look so much more important.

[Graf Zahl]

This is not for Randy, it's for people like you who think that auto-updates is the greatest stuff since sliced bread. Instead of making suggestions that actually improve the game yet again something that everybody who can look at it from an objective viewpoint dismisses as a complete overkill solution to a non-issue is discusses ad nauseum. It happened with the ACS networking where any attempt to get some sense into the discussion failed completely. And yet again it happens with an idiotic internet 'feature' that has no real use except making a lot of work.

[Mannequin]

Get off of the fucking auto-updates will you? I think the feature request forum should be just for that: Requests for features.

Despite what you thought about the request for auto-updates, someone else thought it valid enough to ask for this. This goes for anything else that you may or may not agree with.

In the same sense, something you bring up for a feature request in the future may be scoffed at the way you are scoffing at auto updates now. So have a seat, a drink, and for god's sake CHILL.

Besides nonsense, like asking for ZDoom to program your microwave, if you don't ask for it, you will never get it and (run-on sentence) others may not even think of it no matter how valid it is. This goes for auto-updates, or some 1337 ACS function that everyone must have.

So while we are asking for over-moderation of this forum, whose the guy who is going to determine how valid something is? Because apparently Randy isn't good enough for the position in your eyes.

-M.

[Graf Zahl]

Randy isn't here! That's the big problem. He opened a feature suggestions forum and then left it alone. As a result there are no real guidelines and all kind of stuff is being posted that hardly constitutes a genuine 'feature'.

I said before this forum even opened that a place like this wouldn't work without guidelines and their enforcement and most of what happens here proves me correct.

[MasterOFDeath]

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=5570

I knew I would burn in hell for this (sorry)

Best feature request ever. I should make a wad like that just for the hell of it

[Mannequin]

Why would Randy open a forum directed at the developer of Zdoom, which would be himself, and then never come by for a visit?

First, I'm not against guidelines. Don't get me wrong on that. But I am against guidelines that make it hard for people that don't share your same opinion about a feature's usefulness.

- What may be useful to one person, may not be useful to another.
- There might not be a majority of people that will use a certain feature, but for the minority it may make their use of ZDoom easier or better.
- Also, as I stated in my last post, it shouldn't hurt to ask for a feature as long as it isn't something ridiculous (SP?) like my example in my previous post.

Second, Randy doesn't exactly exercise the heavy hand of moderation on any of the other forums. If we were to implement guidelines prohibiting this or that, how are we going to inforce them without Randy granting someone the ability to on this forum? So far, Randy and a lot of others are still stand-off-ish about handing over moderatorship to someone on these forums.

We have got to have balanced guildlines, then we have to have the ability to enforce them. The enforcement is probably going to stay Randy. So we need to step up to the plate and make reasonable guidelines...

-M.

[Jim]

How about letting people vote on bugs? If every post in this forum automatically included a poll "great idea", "good idea", "OK idea", "bad idea", and "terrible idea", maybe the controversial (and sometimes just plain bad or dumb) requests would be voted down.

Whatever, I just wish that ZDoom's development were more transparent. There are two reasons that every forks ZDoom: (1) it is the highest quality and most feature-filled port, and (2) it is difficult to contribute to the project when you cannot see the current state of source code, or even frequent snapshots. Remember, SourceForge.net is a free host, with automatic bug management/feature request areas, web-browseable cvs, and many other things.