issues with UserVoice

[Dwight Arthur]

Several people, notably Grant, have made some good points about UserVoice lately and I'd like to fill in some background.

About five years ago a user named Mark was frustrated about the lack of communication between users and developers of MLO. He particularly thought we needed a way for users to let devs know what changes to MLO they really cared about.He wanted the devs to be able to tell which ideas mattered to lots of people versus which ideas mattered to a few people with loud voices. He got Andrey's promise of cooperation, then he reviewed lots of user voting systems that were available way back then, and picked UserVoice. The rules and the setup are Mark's and he served as moderator for about three years and then about two years ago he moved on. It's a tribute to Mark that this thing he set into motion is still running two year on autopilot. It has achieved its original objectives, and Andrey has kept up his side of the bargain, giving serious consideration to the big vote-getters and keeping it updated as to requests that have been implemented. That said, there are some problems that get worse as time goes by, and if we ever get to the point that the user community would like to make some big or small changes the first question will be, who's going to be the manager/moderator and does he or she seem likely to stick with it even when it gets frustrating?

I would imagine that in the intervening years something better than UserVoice has showed up

Here are the three main issues I'm aware of.

1. New ideas don't get a chance. When it was new every idea was on equal footing. But some ideas have been racking up votes for years now, and they are all on the front page. New ideas with a couple of votes are at the back. People with votes available usually spend them all before getting to the new stuff.

2. Big ideas for little products are lost. The best idea in the world for MLO/iPad is unlikely to make is on to the front page, it,s crowded out by even moderately popular ideas for MLO/Windows 

3. people set up recommendations that duplicate existing recommendations, or they set up different but overlapping recommendations. This splits the vote and makes the idea look less popular than it is. There's no mechanism in UserVoice for merging two recommendations, and in the case of overlapping recommendations it's not clear that merging would be acceptable to all of the voters

Is it time for a change? What  would you differently? How? And most important, Who's gonna do it?

[pottster]

Hi Dwight,

Thanks for starting this debate. Some thoughts from me.

Is it time for a change?

Yes. Not least because an increasing amount of proposed change now seems be going via the Beta Group/Jira route which has restricted access. This may or may not be a good thing but it needs to be discussed in the wider forum. In addition, the role of UserVoice needs clarification. I believe that this has to come from Andrey rather than users. How does he want to employ UserVoice (or similar) to drive his planned development? I've participated in several of these type of these type of user involvement tools and they have all worked differently. Some have very active involvement from the developer and they use the outcome to directly drive the product roadmap and others have next to no involvement from the developer and the output just serves as a kind of wishlist or idea generator. Both have value but it needs to be clear how the output is used.

What would you do differently? How?

The other trend I've noted in software development is the increasing use of user surveys. These have the advantage of focussed feedback at one point in time (how many people voting on UserVoice would still cast their votes the same way? how many of them still use MLO?). Of course, it doesn't have to be either/or, but the more channels for feedback the more potential for confusion and frustration. In my opinion, we definitely need separate channels for Destop/Mobile though.

Who's gonna do it?

This is a good question. I feel strongly that it should be someone within MLO or very close to Andrey. That way the impact of the user feedback is assured and the continuity issue faced by the departure of people such as Mark is mitigated. For me, it would be a natural fit for someone like Marina Afanasenko - sorry Marina!

I encourage other users to contribute to this thread. It's important that we give Andrey and his team a clear indication about how we would like our voice to be heard.

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Totally agree with Dwight and Pottster.

Actually the problem is maybe not with UserVoice itself, but the way how
it is a) somehow unofficial and not prominently linked, so many users
don't even find it, and b) not closely monitored by the staff. Problem
b) also applies to this mailing list.

Maybe both *are* monitored, but the problem is that if doesn't feel like
that since we rarely get any feedback from developers. Not every
reported issue needs to be dealt with, but every issue reported on the
mailinglist or uservoice should at least get a short comment or reply -
not from users, but from some staff member. Staff members should also
clean up the issues by splitting or merging issues as appropriate.

-- Chris