[Scummvm-devel] Wiki feedback

[Max Horn]

Am 03.03.2010 um 00:21 schrieb Johannes Schickel:

>
>>> The feature request tracker is the only place where random users can
>>> post requests (I think, is that right?). As soon as a feature  
>>> request
>>> is approved, it should be deleted/closed and moved to the wiki (it
>>> should be the responsibility of the person who closes it).
>>>
>
> Personally I prefer the feature request tracker for feature requests
> instead of having them somewhere on the wiki. First of all you can
> monitor them on the feature request tracker (easily) to get new status
> information, like someone willing to work,  suggestions/feedback from
> other users/developers etc. That's all something the wiki can't do
> easily (or I'm not informed enough about the possibility of our  
> wiki ;-).

You can watch a page for changes, but indeed, not a single paragraph,  
at least not without extensions.

The tracker indeed has this advantage. It also has the advantage that  
everybody with an SF.net user item can add stuff, as opposed to the  
Wiki. But IMO otherwise the feature request tracker is a stinking pile  
of crap missing tons of desirable features a modern issue tracker  
should have... :) There is no way of grouping things hierarchically,  
no way to model dependencies, no way to vote on items for users, no  
way to set an "importance" level, etc. We could define some groups/ 
categories of course (Like use one to distinguish "Must have", "Nice  
idea", "Cool vision", "Maybe", "What's the point?" ;-). But it all  
feels tacked on.

I really wish we had a better tool for these things. One that allows  
to track both feature requests from external users, as well as ideas,  
TODOs, etc. I was hoping at some point that IdeaTorrent might do that,  
but IdeaTorrent lacks a full text search feature, which IMO makes it  
unusable right away.

Anyway, I am fine with keeping feature request items open, but I guess  
I'll then just end up duplicating feature requests (with a link to the  
FR tracker item) on the Wiki anyway -- because adding all those ideas  
and TODOs to the feature tracker would be too painful (and not  
appropriate, given the limitations of the FR tracker). Hopefully  
that'll work for the time being.


> Anyway I definitely wouldn't like that the feature request entries
> should be moved to the wiki. Also I'm not aware that we "approve"
> feature requests. We rather reject some (or lower the priority by a  
> lot).

Agreed.


>
>>> The wiki is good for users but not so much for developers.
>>>
>>
>> Hehe, my feeling so far is quite the opposite ;).
>>
>
> Same here, the wiki does not offer any way to comment about feature
> requests for example, while the feature request tracker does. This is
> because we do not allow public account generation for our wiki  
> (which I
> consider good btw.), I guess, so the feature request tracker at least
> offers a way for the users to comment on things (after registering  
> with
> sf.net of course). So all in all the trackers should be nicer to use  
> for
> users than our wiki ;-).

Giving users the ability to comment on FRs is important, agreed. IMO  
the SF.net tracker is suboptimal for that, too, but indeed, it's  
clearly better than a read-only wiki ;).

>
> On the other hand the wiki is a place there the developers can put  
> their
> TODOs etc. Though I think the wiki lacks nice notifications like the
> sf.net trackers. For example I consider the wiki watch-list far worse
> than the possibility to get notification emails from sf.net about
> tracker changes. (I'm not aware that this is also possible with the  
> wiki
> btw.) This makes the wiki not the best place for developers too.

You can get an RSS feed of all items you watch on the Wiki. I think  
it's also possible to turn on email notifications, but I think an RSS  
feed is just as good (use an external aggregator which turns it into  
emails if you prefer that). We could check whether there is an  
extension that allows finer grained watching, too.



Bye,
Max