[development] Voting on issues (was Re: How to post bug reports andpatches)

[Derek Wright]

On Nov 4, 2008, at 9:09 AM, Tomas Fulopp wrote:

> Simple accumulative voting on issues (+1 system, one per user per  
> issue) is
> a) simpler and therefore more elegant, and even more importantly:

Not necessarily true.  That's just your opinion.

> b) people use it intuitively already - they add those cluttering  
> "Subscribing" messages because they have no other way of doing  
> this. If limited vote was applied, bumping the issue by saying  
> "Subscribing" would continue whenever one runs out of votes (even  
> if such messages would not be counted as votes).

That's going to happen anyway.  Even if we add a way to subscribe or  
vote on issues without commenting, people will continue to post  
meaningless comments.  This isn't an argument for or against any of  
the proposed changes.

> Keep up the good ideas flowing, let's make the best system possible.

The best system possible is one that people can actually use. ;)  Far  
too many threads about improving d.o in some way die at exactly this  
stage -- endless discussion, no action.  In this case, there's  
already code that exists, was written by members of the security  
team, works, and is ready to deploy.  If we go back to the drawing  
board now for another few months of speculation and bike-shedding  
about "the best system possible", I'll bet $20 that the code never  
materializes and none of it, even the stuff that already works, will  
be used.

I'm not trying to be defeatist or stifle anyone's initiative, but in  
this case, I think it's time to invoke one of Drupal's oldest  
mantras: "Talk is silver, code is gold".  Or something along the  
lines of "let not perfection be the barrier of progress" (or however  
that goes).

How about we get the current thing running and see how it goes for a  
few months, and then have some actual data and experience to use to  
discuss further improvements?  That approach seems to have served the  
"make the handbooks a wiki" experiment well, let's do it again.

Cheers,
-Derek (dww)