Say you want something done, and it's not getting there. Annoying, eh? Tired of your stone hauling pulling all your dwarves from every other job they could be doing? Why should you have to screw with labor settings every time you want to get some stone out of the way without making your more important dwarves unavailable because they're off hauling?
I think Toady should code in a method of allowing the player to set different priorities for tasks that are considered important to them, instead of important to the game, because the code says so. As it stands, low priority (to the game, I know I sure as hell don't like looking at miasma) jobs like cleaning and handling stockpiles rarely gets done if there is other work, but oftentimes, these things are the stuff you really want done (At least I do, anyways).
I propose possibly adding a general job priority adjustment screen, with 3-5 settings for each job that would allow players to prioritize tasks based on their personal view of how important that task is. Higher priority tasks would obviously be chosen from the job list by idlers more frequently, but lower priority tasks should not be completely ignored (maybe some kind of system of choosing, based on how many workers are already handling a specific task of a certain priority).
I don't know if this is feasible, but it certainly would save a lot of hair-pulling on the parts of those of us who like to see our fortresses without half-empty barrels laying around in stock while completely empty ones are being partly filled and taking up more space, and without stinking clouds of miasma hovering over piles of slain goblins/ratmen/what have you that nobody in the fort gives enough of a damn about to clean.
[ August 29, 2007: Message edited by: Skeeblix ]