Redmine

Note that this is a direct request against Feature #2009, which has a number of votes, but you have to manually go through the thread to gauge the 'popularity'

Alex Bevilacqua wrote:

Note that this is a direct request against Feature #2009, which has a number of votes, but you have to manually go through the thread to gauge the 'popularity'

I don't see any relation between this issue and issue #2009? Can you please explain your reference?

Mischa The Evil wrote:

Alex Bevilacqua wrote:

Note that this is a direct request against Feature #2009, which has a number of votes, but you have to manually go through the thread to gauge the 'popularity'

I don't see any relation between this issue and issue #2009? Can you please explain your reference?

Mischa,

I don't think I used my example very well. What I meant was that Feature #2009 has gotten a lot of positive feedback and '+1' votes, but without a more structured voting system, the only way to establish that that feature request is 'popular' is to manually check the issue's comments.

There is no direct relationship with Feature #2009, I just thought it would be a good candidate for a votable feature request :P

Alex Bevilacqua wrote:

without a more structured voting system, the only way to establish that that feature request is 'popular' is to manually check the issue's comments.

I'm not going after "popular" requests, and I think most if not all other contributors don't either, so installing this would only give a false sense of someone actually caring.

Felix Schäfer wrote:

Alex Bevilacqua wrote:

without a more structured voting system, the only way to establish that that feature request is 'popular' is to manually check the issue's comments.

I'm not going after "popular" requests, and I think most if not all other contributors don't either, so installing this would only give a false sense of someone actually caring.

Regardless of whether the core devs use this to establish priority, there's still value in maintaining a 'popularity' metric on issues.

For example, if this were something that users could sort/filter by, it could help people identify areas where contributions are needed. There are so many open issues in redmine that could be addressed by the community, but they're generally lost as newer issues are submitted.

Other than creating a false perception of the developers 'caring', i don't really see the harm in giving users a tool like this. You could even add a disclaimer to the effect of "the voting system is not used to prioritize issues for the developers, but is used to indicate the popularity of a particular issue for searching purposes only."

+1

;)

+1 ;)

+1 Yep, I'd like to know which issues are popular. To see if those I'd like to see implemented have a real chance to be, one day. (I don't believe contributors don't care of what users need, even if there's a disclaimer :).
It can also give ideas to plug-in developers...

Eric

+1
Excellent idea! :)

+1!

I would also find it useful not to get notification mails for "+1" events without further text.

And I like how Lauchpad has an "Affects me, too" instead of a "vote" button. This might reduce the "false impression of someone caring".

+1. Also interested in this. Google issue tracker has this feature implemented as stars.

Is there a plan for this feature to be implemented?

+1
This Plugin if quite good - but the vote count column in issue overview and sorting does not work for us in redmine 1.1.2. Issue voting works fine, every user has one vote per issue - limited.

It is so frustrating when you get an email from redmine.org just to find out someone has put a "+1" under one of your watched issues. So this feature-request has my +1!

Yes, That it.
Voting shouldn't send notifications mails!

It's a bit dispiriting to hear Felix Schäfer say that he doesn't care what the community wants, and though that's his prerogative, it also completely misses the point. This is a feature request for Redmine, not a request for voting to be implemented just on the Redmine project. It may not be wanted for Redmine itself (though it seems ideally suited to it) but a lot of people who use Redmine for their own projects would appreciate the ability to listen to their users more effectively.

There are obviously a huge number of possible strategies for prioritising issues. Redmine currently supports setting a priority property on an issue, where multiple issues may share the same priority, grouping issues into versions, and setting 'precedes'/'follows' links between issues. None of these work particularly well if you want to crowd source your issue prioritisation, and also suffer from other problems, such as users unhelpfully classifying everything as 'urgent'.

The simplest voting system is one vote per person per issue, and the voter simply decides whether to cast it or not. A voter voting on no issues has the same impact as a voter voting on all issues. This helps to solve the crowd source problem, but works best with large democratic crowds where no subset of users is considered more or less important than the others. It also prevents a user from indicating how important a feature is to them - they can only make a binary decision.

A better voting system would support block voting, in which users are granted a fixed number of votes (based on their group, role or individual ID) and they may distribute them as they wish. Frequently (at least in my experience) Redmine is used in situations where a project has a small number of stakeholders of varying levels of importance. Say the project is a commercial development for a newspaper. The editor might have ten votes, the commercial director 5, and the writers three each. A voter can place more than one vote on a single issue but may not have more than their total vote allowance 'in play' at any one time. By shifting your votes as your priorities change, you affect the overall prioritisation of issues.

If you don't need crowd sourcing of prioritisation, but still want to solve the 'everything is high priority' problem, then a drag-drop reordering system is generally a good solution and is described in #8016.

In summary, my point is that Redmine should consider issue prioritisation as something that requires a case by case strategy for each project, and while the mechanisms built in at the moment solve some common use cases, they are far from ideal in all cases. Implementing voting (and indeed drag-drop reordering) would be a great step towards providing more flexible options.

Andrew

Andrew Betts wrote:

It's a bit dispiriting to hear Felix Schäfer say that he doesn't care what the community wants

Just to clarify: it's not that I didn't care but that I have never seen Redmine development driven by the "popularity" of features, be it real or perceived.

As a side-note, please also be aware that I don't consider myself an active Redmine contributor regarding development, so things might have changed since then. In any case, and if it hasn't changed since then, Jean-Philippe has the last word in such matters, so if you want to pick names out, I'm not the right one (anymore), sorry.

By the way, here is the corresponding (open) issue of the forked ChiliProject.

The good thing of free software, for their owners/developers, is that it's not their meal-ticket. Therefore they're not constrained by the market, users needs and competition. They are free to take little care of user feedback and focus on whatever topics that interest them, being them of little real value. Priorities are not guided by those who actually use the software in the real world.

Popularity of issues/requests is good information. For users and for developers.
It would be a lack of honesty to claim that a mean for having a clear picture of popular user needs would be of no use.

If the owners fear that it would only give a false sense of someone actually caring, then they can simply write a clear notice somewhere (though they should care actually).

An issue with issues which are popular in this website, apart numerous "+1" comments, is that they're buried into lots of other issues. As it's not easy to find them out and to sort them by popularity, it causes many duplicates being created and then closed and then new ones created, and discussions being spread over several similar issues. It causes noise and distraction.

If a PMS is a tool for keeping track of the goals and progress of a project, then this site which is about a PMS should have a "voting" mechanism in order to keep the developers on track with (or at least well informed on) the stuff that matters to their user base.

+1
Related to #1011

+1

Being able to sort issue by popularity would be amazing for implementing new features, instead of willy-nilly as someone with coding experience ends up needing the feature badly.

I'd like to clarify slightly:

This enhancement request relates to REDMINE.ORG exclusively; it is not a feature request for Redmine.

If an administrator could step in, I'd like to update the title of this issue to [REDMINE.ORG] Implement voting system

I think my original subject wasn't clear enough ...

+1

Have a +1, because it seems there is not a better way to do this right now. (oh wait...)

Alex Bevilacqua wrote:

I'd like to clarify slightly:

This enhancement request relates to REDMINE.ORG exclusively; it is not a feature request for Redmine.

Why not? I can see this benefitting any redmine instance.

I've removed myself as a watcher from many issues. Not becuase I'm not interested, but because I keep getting spammed with useless "+1" and "me too" type posts. If we can improve the signal to noise ratio, I'm sure that we can encourage others to remain engaged in the project.

If I read Alex's comment correctly, then its not really a question of why this shouldn't be for any redmine instance. There are other tickets (like #1011) for that though, and the Redmine Vote Plugin can do the job as well. But while I expect that the majority of users on redmine.org are in fact admins of their own redmine instances and therefore free to install plugins, we are not admins of redmine.org of course. So this ticket was a specific request to have that plugin (or if need be build new core functionality) on redmine.org.

I think redmine.org could benefit from adding issue voting, if for no other reason than helping to clean up the massive number of "+1"s that we see around here. While it is certainly true that an open source developer doesn't have to answer to anybody about what problems he or she works to solve (unless hired on a bounty of course), if somebody wants to give back to a community then having an idea of the community's wants and needs can be very helpful.

K. Scott Tripp wrote:

If I read Alex's comment correctly, then its not really a question of why this shouldn't be for any redmine instance. There are other tickets (like #1011) for that though, and the Redmine Vote Plugin can do the job as well. But while I expect that the majority of users on redmine.org are in fact admins of their own redmine instances and therefore free to install plugins, we are not admins of redmine.org of course. So this ticket was a specific request to have that plugin (or if need be build new core functionality) on redmine.org.

I think redmine.org could benefit from adding issue voting, if for no other reason than helping to clean up the massive number of "+1"s that we see around here. While it is certainly true that an open source developer doesn't have to answer to anybody about what problems he or she works to solve (unless hired on a bounty of course), if somebody wants to give back to a community then having an idea of the community's wants and needs can be very helpful.

You hit the nail on the head.

The goal of this proposal was to streamline community interaction with issues on Redmine.org ... period.

The larger the community grows, the more cumbersome this site gets to navigate, and the harder you have to work to isolate useful comments in growing histories.

A proper voting system (or a way for the community to show support for an issue) would make it a lot easier for new developers to locate starting points. It also helps expose popular features to prospective plugin authors.

Hello,
So is there a good plugin to do that now? :)
thanks in advance

If there would be a feature to vote for features, I would vote for this one... +1

+1

Please, implement this feature

+1 <- Feels awkward