Celozon wrote:I would like to clarify that the reason that thread did not produce much in the way of results, as I and other staff tried to point out at the time, is because it is not a good medium to explore suggestions and get community input on specific suggestions.
There is a reason most threads are about a single topic of discussion. Trying to discuss multiple very different suggestions ended up causing a suggestion to be talked about for a page or two before someone would bring up a different idea and that would be talked about instead. The point of having a public suggestions board is that users can give their argument why a suggestion should be implemented and the userbase as a whole has an opportunity to make their own voices heard on that. Just because 1, 2 or even 10 people think a suggestion is good, doesn't mean there aren't 20 more who disagree. Confining the discussion about a suggestion to one or two pages in a 200 page topic means that the vast majority of players never even had the opportunity to give their own opinions on it before the thread moved to a new suggestion. As a result the suggestions end up only reflecting on the opinions of a few users and doesn't tell us if thats how the userbase as a whole feels about it.
This is why staff requested many times in that thread that people who had suggestions make separate threads in the suggestions board for each one, so they could be meaningfully discussed. Unfortunately I only ever saw maybe 2 or 3 suggestions get their own threads made. I personally do try to push for suggestions that are highly requested, and I think would help improve the site, but its hard to stand behind a suggestion that has only a handful of support buried in a giant topic. I personally also think its very important to discuss how an idea would be implemented, pros and cons, and different ways it could be done to find the most ideal method. This provides admins with a clear picture of what users actually want. Unfortunately its impossible to discuss these in detail on a thread that is constantly changing topics.
To further my point, that thread has a google spreadsheet with all the suggestions, and almost all of them do not link to the point in the thread where it was suggested. This means that almost every suggestion there amounts to a single sentence idea. Some are colored to show that the person who put it together though they got 'notable attention', but how much is that? How many agreed? Does that include those who thought it sounded fine but weren't enthusiastic? Were some users only in support if it were implemented in a certain way? There is no way to tell without digging through the 200 pages to find it. Some of these suggestions phrased so vaguely its unclear how they would even be implemented. 'Limit C$ Inflation' is fine as an idea and I'm sure many agreed, but it says nothing about what should actually be done. Maybe the original poster discussed it more but its not linked.
I do try hard to provide constructive criticisms on things like this. I have no desire to silence users, I find many suggestions to be interesting ideas that I never would have thought of myself and think its good users have a space to suggest these things. While that thread did do a good job of showing that many users were upset about suggestions not being implemented, saying that the thread is a compilation of suggestions and admins just didn't do anything is a bit untrue in my opinion. At least in my own opinion, nothing about that thread worked well as a way to compile suggestions or discuss them, and as a result not much could be implemented from it.
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In regards to this thread as a whole;
In the end, the admins are the final say on what gets implemented and I do share the frustration with how some suggestions seem to sit around forever without being implemented. However, I do think its important to be aware of what work needs to go into a suggestion to implement it. A suggestion might sound simple but need a whole new system to be built in the back end for it to actually run. Whether its ideal or not we do only have one site coder and at least while that is the case I think we should be realistic about what we expect a single person to be creating while also doing the regular back-end maintenance of the site and everything else required of a site coder. Thats why I tend to prefer suggestions that require little to no additional coding to be done as those are more likely to be implemented quickly if admins decide its a viable suggestion since either other staff can do the bulk of the work required or it would not be too time consuming for Nick to implement.
Word walls aside, I think a thread compiling popular suggestions is fine as an idea, but would requiring linking to all said suggestions, and technically the suggestion's directory is already that so another thread would probably be considered too similar. I'd suggest replying on the directory thread with any suggestions that are missing from it so they can be added, and replying on suggestions you do think are good so they can get more user feedback. I do understand the frustration on suggestions never getting admin feedback and I personally would like to see more input on suggestions as well, but I do think it goes go a long way to be able to show admins a well thought out suggestion with a lot of feedback and support on it.
Your points make a ton of sense, but I actually liked that thread because it was an organized list of suggestions as well as being a nice discussion.
I was actually thinking of making a new thread with all the suggestions and a new “priority list” to show what the community wants the most. It’s just really frustrating when a majority of suggestion threads aren’t even seen by admins and won’t even be implemented anyways, that’s how threads like those happen.
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