About the "Feature request" forum sugested rules

Hi,

I write this topic because I have been posting in the feature request forum and honestly, as a devote user of utorrent, my experience there were not nice at all.

The problem:

When a user post a feature request, it is very common to this to happen:

- people discriminate the request by saying:

"its lazy", the user reject because its an automation request that will make live easier

"it is not worth the bytes", the user reject because he think this request will "bloat" utorrent just because he don't need this feature

"do X, so you don't need your Y request" (even when X does not solve the problem), the user does not understand the request, and suggest an unvalid way to circunvent it, making it clear there is no need to "bloat" ut with this feature.

"bad feature", the user thinks that he can moderate feature requests, he think he is the developer

- the reporter that has taken time to think about what can make utorrent an even better client, get frustated and shoked by the kind of replies it get from the users.

- this make people wish they never post in the first place

The solution:

In order to make a peacefull and more enjoyable forum, I recomend this:

- to create an official "Feature Request Forum Official Rules" and make it a post-it in the forum.

The rules can be something like this:

1. "be polite"

2. "do not insult the request or the reporter"

3. "Be on-topic, talk about the feature, ask the reporter to describe it more"

4. "if you like the feature, post a positive review and/or add new ideas"

5. "if you don't like the feature, let the developers decide.

No need to say that you don't want this feature.

And no need to post why you don't want this feature"

6. "advise the reporter if: this feature is implemented,

if this feature was marked as not being implemented in an

official document,

if this is a dupe"

- (optional) assing a "feature request forum" moderator, his task must be to ask users to consider posting using the forum rules. This is only a suggestion to take work away from moderators. I don't have anything against current moderators.

What do you think about this rules? What were your experience in the Feature Request Forum?

Comments are welcome, peace

Oliver

+1

You get my vote !

Agreed. I'm probably biased in your favour since I agreed with the feature you were trying to get implemented, but several µT users take the "don't bloat µT" argument way too far, IMO.

In the end, it's up to ludde, however, and I think this is just a side-effect of him not spending much time in the forums..

oliversl: I understand where you're coming from, and I've seen some incidents that resemble what you describe, However, I think that it is not that common, and it usually happens with the same people who are out for a pointless argument to help them with their daily boredom.

Having said that, I do agree with most of what you've said, except:

"if you don't like the feature, let the developers decide. No need to say that you don't want this feature. And no need to post why you don't want this feature"

I think that forums are democratic by nature, and if you use them politely and within the guidelines that you have posted, it should be alright to express every opinion. It could also be beneficial, and make the developers see something that they might miss otherwise.

- Yes, I agree, some of the "bloat" comments are unnecessary.

- "The use[r] think that he can moderate feature requests" -- well we base our arguments against feature requests based on ludde's previous decisions. Sure, he has often come around and implemented stuff, but a lot of times, we're on the money. ludde doesn't visit the forums often, so someone's gotta do it in his stead. Very often, the original poster realizes that his request was unneeded, so what's so wrong with having some backseat moderators (sometimes)? I said this in the other thread, and I'll say it again, this is a forum. It's here for discussion.

- "Appoint a feature request moderator" -- why aren't the current moderators good enough?

@splintax, thanks for the suppor in my previous request.

I think if we keep the forum clean, maybe ludde will read the forum again

- "The use[r] think that he can moderate feature requests" -- well we base our arguments against feature requests based on ludde's previous decisions. Sure, he has often come around and implemented stuff, but a lot of times, we're on the money. ludde doesn't visit the forums often, so someone's gotta do it in his stead.

Again, let the developers decide. If you are an official developer team member, I will respect your opinion. If you're a user like me, then all what you say I consider only you opinion.

- "Appoint a feature request moderator" -- why aren't the current moderators good enough?

Just to make moderator's work easier. I have no complain to the current moderators.

Nah, ludde has been relegating forum moderation to other people since the beginning, starting with vurlix, so there's no "again"

For your information, I support most of your suggestions, and the only problems I had with it were the two I posted above.

If you're a user like me, then all what you say I consider only you opinion.

Yes, I'm only an average user like you. Many things I've said so far have been opinions, never a decision I make for µTorrent (how could I?).

I think that forums are democratic by nature, and if you use them politely and within the guidelines that you have posted, it should be alright to express every opinion. It could also be beneficial, and make the developers see something that they might miss otherwise.

I think forums are democratic, but the "Feature Request" forum is a special forum. Is a forum where users tell the developers what they want. As I see, all my feature requests are directed only to the developers.

And since this is not an opensource project, there is no democracy in the decision making of which features are implemented and which not. Sad but true.

Of course the feature voting system helps to measure how well a feature will be received by the users.

That beeing said, I always welcome polite post directed to me. No matter if they are in favor or against my request.

Even open source isn't fully democratic, as there's still a central control somewhere that decides what stays and what gets thrown out. That said, just because the project isn't open source doesn't mean the forums don't have to be democratic, or at least as close as possible. Meaning open discussions should be allowed -- why not?

Meaning open discussions should be allowed -- why not?

It was just an example of some OpenSource projects, were a user can contribute a feature. For the records, I don't want ut to be OSS or talk about open source here.

As hofshi said, polite replies are welcome. The rules are sugestions.

I just don't see the point of discusing if a feature request should be implemented or not within plain users. Is a waste of time because:

- the normal user don't have a vote, only opinions

- the reported will not always say: "oh, you're right, I don't need this feature". The reporter will always want his feature to be implemented, no matter what other have to say.

- I don't think ludde will be influenced by negative reponses to a request, he will make his own personal decision. And if he want to listen to the users, he rater will look at the vote results instead of reading pages and pages of non-sense discusions and thousand of points of view.

My idea is simple, I post a request, the developer read it and decides. If someone wants to say something, do it according to the rules and commond sense.

And if he want to listen to the users, he rater will look at the vote results instead of reading pages and pages of non-sense discusions and thousand of points of view.

but what if he wants to know what your reasons for voting the way you voted were?

The rules seem intended to stifle reasoned criticism and the providing of alternatives.

Here's a better guideline then your #4 guideline:

"If you want to engage, you respond. If you don't want to engage, you don't respond."

I know which two threads (1, 2)you are probably thinking of when you wrote this, so let me write my POV. At least my part of the engagement could have ended within two rounds and in fact I had almost forgotten all about it until you started on it a month later. You don't see me attacking Titanzor or marioletto, who also support the feature.

Instead of just supporting the feature, or even trying to convince me the feature is important enough and there is truly no alternative, you chose to trample on my POV. IMO, you just don't do that and expect the Trampled not to get you into a furball for it.

As for the rest, I don't know why you want a new mod but if someone steps up I'm fine. The rest are just policies I thought were being mostly followed anyway.

I believe my post was the final straw for oliversl xD

That's exactly what I was trying to get at... make the feature convincing enough to be implemented. Otherwise, ludde or Firon (who takes good suggestions and posses them to ludde) would have to sift through stuff that he has no convincing reason to implement.

Well said, Ultima. The feature requests forums are very delicate in nature. We all want µTorrent to stay as small as possible (with the exception of a few, maybe :|), and only implement a select few features that a large majority supports. Now, this is why you really need to make a case for your feature, because otherwise people won't be convinced why you need it so much. Don't take it personal when someone is against your feature, for whatever reason. That's all.

YES! That's what I was forgetting to mention... there's NOTHING PERSONAL against the request, just further inquiry to see if the feature passes the (appealing and useful):(relatively easy to code [for the time being]) ratio =P

I tend to not respond to any feature requests and let you lot duke it out. But I do read every post, and if it -really- gets out of hand, then I would step in... but I guess I haven't really.

In any case, I think some people do get a little personal when commenting on the requests, though you shouldn't take "lazy feature" as a criticism so badly, because it often is true. In some cases, it doesn't really apply, and neither does the size of the feature. It's more the actual utility, complexity, and if it really benefits more than just 2 or 3 random people.

I think some of you guys could stand to be a little nicer though, sometimes I think you (not singling out any specific person) might be a little too mean and scare away the newbies.

lol I think I need to chill. I really try my hardest to not be hot-headed about issues, but lately, I've been seeing so many dupes and stuff, and this frustration (not really against anyone, but just the fact that it's duplicate, among other things) is starting to leak into my posts...

@hofshi,

ludde is what I call, I genious programer. If he need to investigate some request he will ask a moderator o just post a question. If the topic is polite and interesting, sure, he will read it.

you chose to trample on my POV. IMO, you just don't do that and expect the Trampled not to get you into a furball for it.

argh, you made me read all that topic again

I told you that your solution to solve that request was not 100% effective. I'm sorry if I offend you, was not my intention.

@Ultima,

it was not your post. Sorry about the misunderstanding, it was that 2 post that Kazuaki mentioned.

We all want �Torrent to stay as small as possible...

thats your POV, I what that utorrent to be small and have many features. ut 1.4 is far better than 1.0

And people many times get personal, no matter how many times you ask not to get personal. Don't know why but it is that way

... and let you lot duke it out

maybe your are the smartest here

It's more the actual utility, complexity, and if it really benefits more than just 2 or 3 random people.

This is something we all may never know. It just imposible to know, there is no real feature voting system, there is audit loggin info in ut that is upload back to utorrent.com so that a stats can be made. Its only about points of view, always. And ut is great client becuse ludde has a great POV.

I think some of you guys could stand to be a little nicer though

Agree, I include myself. Sorry if I had some not nice posts.

Let work forward.

Maybe this can be changed:

"if you don't like the feature, let the developers decide. No need to say that you don't want this feature. And no need to post why you don't want this feature"

only if someone post a link to a topic where discussiones were polite from top to bottom

Of course, that rule always let you make polite and on-topic discussions.

I personally don't see the big idea behind labeling every "undesirable" feature "bloat".

At this point in time, I can't imagine µtorrent being as big (as far as memory/cpu/hdd) as the other competitor(s) (can we consider it a competitor? I dont know..) in the field.

I agree, too many people are shouting "bloat" or something similar and trying to end the argument at that... (I just searched through my own posts to make sure I wasn't being a hypocrite, and found that I haven't used the term "bloat" against any specific request... *proud* xD) In the end, it's ludde who decides what's bloated -- he has a good sense of it. What's more important is eliciting good arguments FOR the features' additions. I agree with Firon about utility (akin to that "ratio" I talked about above), and when I see a feature that I think won't be widely used, I try and ask the person requesting to give a better reason.

I already say before, better close the featurerequest forum and exit working on Utorrent, Utorrent is already ready. If Utorrent become 1 KB bigger some people will get mad and their live are also ruined. All new features are immediality called bloated, dont say it isn't.

Live long in peace ,

cheers.... SolidasRock

@oliversl :

This is a stupid request. You are making the forum bloated, and big as hell.

Okey, just joking I absolutely agree with you, i too had my wars with some of the bloatwarriors around here (some of you might remember the progressbar in the main torrentview cpu-hog-like-hell thingie).

I actually do it my way. I just browse the feature request, and if i like something i put a vote, or a yes in it. Else i stay in silent. If i see a "bad" (read: i don't like it) request title, i read it, i might get convinced, or if i see the word "optionally" i don't even read it further. I won't ever say to a request to miss it, won't ever vote "no" on the voting page. I can't even understand why anyone vote "no" for an optional feature on the voting page. What they can say: bloat, big, complicated, go to azureus... and stuff. This is not their problem.

Btw: why would anyone say no to an other one's need, if it doesn't touches him directly.

Bloatwarrior OMG.... a nice name...

Again, let the developers decide. If you are an official developer team member, I will respect your opinion.

Well, strictly speaking there is no developer team, but there is a development team... ludde is the only person who has access to the µTorrent source (well, I think vurlix did at one stage, but he is no longer affiliated with us), and the rest of the team handle things like the forums, the website, documentation, et cetera. We don't get a special forum title though

Ohh, I was thinking that vurlix was a developer too, since it was one of the firsts in the forum (phpbb). Is sad to know that he is not affiliated anymore to ut.

About the forum team, I agree, you should all have forum title under the nickname, somthing like "moderator" or something like that. Maybe is a limitation with punbb.