PureBasic Forums - English

I wish we had a "POLL" setup on EVERY wish that was posted here so that appraising the value of these wishes would not so obscure to the reader. I know if I was Fred, you all would drive me crazy

I keep seeing the same wishes posted by the same users over and over again. A poll on each wish would apply a weighted measure to each wish and the more popular wishes would become more obvious. Maybe even give us all more effective results.

I have several wishes myself and I hesitate to post them because most would be redundant requests. Some that I see I agree with and some I don't. Just seems like polling the users would be a lot more affective to the end goal... enhancing PureBasic.

Well, yes and no.

I agree democracy is usually a good idea, and what most people want is likely to make a product more popular.

But Fred has to decide where he wants the language to be in a year or so time. Just because there are a bunch of users who want some function added doesn't necessarily mean that this is a worthwhile addition to the language. Sometimes these things can be programmed just as easily by the users. For example "collision detection" has often been asked for. Surely things like this should be part of the application, not part of the language.

Conversely, things like accurate maths cannot be added easily by the application programmer. So Fred may decide to concentrate on the core deficiencies of the language instead of application specific elements.

Personally, I think a language can get too complicated. It becomes more difficult to learn, less reliable, and more difficult to port to and from other languages.

A YES/NO vote isn't really very useful. You are asking someone "do you want this feature for free or not", so most people will answer "yes". What Fred needs is a priority list. Given a choice of language improvements which would you vote for?

geoff wrote:I agree democracy is usually a good idea, and what most people want is likely to make a product more popular.

I think you missed my point. This wish forum is a democracy to begin with in that anyone can express their wishes. The proposed poll added to each new wish would only help to serve as indicator so Fred could judge overall interest more easily. It was not proposed to "vote" on who get what.

But Fred has to decide where he wants the language to be in a year or so time. Just because there are a bunch of users who want some function added doesn't necessarily mean that this is a worthwhile addition to the language.

Further illustrating you missed the point. My whole point was to help Fred to establish user interest. He can not effectively decide where he wants the language to go without user feedback. His users will lose interest if their interest are never heard or are so disorganized that he cannot effectively apraise their value to the rest of the community.

So Again I would like to emphasize that adding a poll to each new wish would NOT be to give the users a chance to vote in new features... ONLY to help Fred to assess interest. Ultimately it is Freds choice where he will take it. I think it is only considerate to help him any way we can because ultimately, regarless of where he takes it, giving him EFFECTIVE feedback is inevitably going to benefit us all.

I think, you havn't read geoff's post thoroughly enough

He didn't miss the point at all.

He said, that a YES/NO vote for any feature won't serve anything, because people tend to vote YES, it doesn't matter what it is they are voting for, as long as it is free and a feature.

If you have instead a list of future features, and the people have to choose the, let's say, 3 most wanted features, that would be more representative. That's so, because they are forced to decide, what they like more to be in future releases.

Oh, and yes, i acknowledge his opinion on that.

freedimension wrote:He didn't miss the point at all.

He said, that a YES/NO vote...

Once again you're turning this into a "VOTING" contest. What I proposed was simply to place a poll on every wish to help summarize user interest. I did not use the word "VOTE" in my proposal so I have no idea why the word keeps coming back except that maybe someone is still missing the point.

Personally, if I came to a poll for which I have no interest, I would NOT mark any opinion. If I thought it would be a waste of time and effort, then I would mark "I disagree". If I thought it could genuinely improve PureBasic, then I would mark "I agree". That's just me I guess.

The problem I see is a common occurance and I'm sure I'm guilty too. People understandably tend to stray from the main topic and muddy the original proposal. Some see each wish as an oportunity to re-iterate their ENTIRE wish "list". I thought if we could find a way to consolidate interest for the original wish into a poll at the top of each wish, that may help to spare Fred a lot of needless bother.

Obviously, you are right. That wont work and these written responses are a perfect example. Two people have already expressed their contentions yet only one person marked "I diagree" and I don't think it was you or Geoff. As for a list and resticting options to only 3 (or whatever), the same contentions would also apply. People will just click on anything they think they can get for free (which I think is totally irrational to say in the first place because Fred doesn't "charge" for upgrades so how the word "free" ever came up either, I just don't undertand).

I'm sure all your feature requests are taken under advisement by Fred, as I've discovered adding the scintilla widget to purebasic (linux) it's not easy.

Also polls are a bit pointless when you put it into this respect, (even thought I do aprove of polls), feature requests have to be weighted up agist 4 operating systems, example: do all 4 supported operating system have an equilavant api to handle the request, also there is a bit of a chickhen and egg thory here too, something need to be goal set before you can progress.

Polls are only useful to know what a priority is.

Personally, if I came to a poll for which I have no interest, I would NOT mark any opinion. If I thought it would be a waste of time and effort, then I would mark "I disagree". If I thought it could genuinely improve PureBasic, then I would mark "I agree". That's just me I guess.

Sure you might not, but others would poll diferently.

The problem I see is a common occurance and I'm sure I'm guilty too. People understandably tend to stray from the main topic and muddy the original proposal. Some see each wish as an oportunity to re-iterate their ENTIRE wish "list". I thought if we could find a way to consolidate interest for the original wish into a poll at the top of each wish, that may help to spare Fred a lot of needless bother.

This is not the way Fred does it I have to say that because I truely don't know, but the way I do it is as a new feature is requested it gets put into a readme file, any repeating ones get ignored.

I like clicked 'yes', I'm just trying to point out negatives / positives.