Feature Requests Wiki?

[syrupcore]

I was wondering if a "feature requests" would work better on a Wiki. It would be easy to see what other people have already asked for and then add comments and suggestions. Plus, Blumentals can move stuff down to the bottom once they've been added. Sort of a way to show 'we listen, and here's what we've implemented' to new customers.

I guess it would be a whole other thing for blumentals to manage though.

just thinking out loud (again).

Will

[Karlis]

Well, this is really an issue, because we get tons of suggestions some get done fast, some are impossible to do and many are in the queue.

What I believe would be better is a custom (say PHP based) list (call it database) with flags and commens. However I'm afrad that whatever you create it won't be used properly anyway.

What are other opinions?

[syrupcore]

PHP list would proly be best but Wiki's are really easy to deal with. Might be more likely folks would use it.

hell, I dunno.

Will

[chrisjlocke]

Requests would just as likely get lost in a wiki as they do in a forum. It would also be 'confusing' having two completely different systems. Most people are happy using a forum, but wikis aren't as popular yet (but growing).
Also, how do wikis cope with two people editing the same page at the same time? If all requests were on one page, wouldn't it get hit a lot? If requests were on a seperate page, how would they be 'indexed' ? Wikis are designed mainly for info lookups - people find pages by looking in an index. If each request was on its own page, how is that different from a forum, where each request now is in its own thread?
They're also prone to 'vandalism' where people can delete all the text. It can be an admin nightmare keep putting it back.

I wouldn't be hard to knock up a PHP script which read through a particular forum and built up an up-to-date list. The subject heading of forum posts could contain 'tags' denoting the level of the suggestion - [1], [2], [3] for what stage in development, [Fixed] for completed ones, etc. This page could then fit in with the rest of the site design...

[Karlis]

The problem is, you won't be ever possible to force users not entering something like "my suggestion" or "feature request", because often people do not read guidelines.

Probably it would be a good idea to have admin-maintained suggestion / request list with voting and commenting features for users.

[chrisjlocke]

This phpBB forum is amazingly easy to tweak via php though - you could add a post to a topic, which a php script then read and changed the subject as appropiate - all 'transparent' to the user.
I was just thinking of ways of keeping it in this phpBB environment - its obviously geared up and designed for discussions - but you also need some 'summary' page.

Thinking about it, the php script which checked the subject headings for tags, could then update another post which is a sticky, containing a 'summary'. Ooh. I'll have to try that for my site....