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[Jiri Petru]

Deleting them all seems like a waste of time when you could just delete the redundant ones.

The thing is... while some suggestions are completely obsolete now (improved hauling), there's a lot of other that could still apply but wouldn't probably be suggested now he know the current roadplan, or would be suggested differently, or would attract different voters... For example: "More Detailed Religion". We know now dwarves with common beliefs would form groups. Does it count like more detailed religion? Or do we want more? Then there are other that could still apply, but that probably wouldn't be suggested now in the first place (we don't have "Room system defined Workshops" but be have moddable workshops which is something very similar... do we still want to keep this eternal suggestion or not?)

All in all, this makes deciding what to keep and what to delete a difficult task. I think it's better just to delete everything and thus force people to rephrase their suggestions with the new development plan in mind.

EDIT: It's not like we can lose the suggestions. They have all been mentioned here in the Suggestions forum, probably dozen times each, right?

[Osmosis Jones]

Archive the list, and set up a new one. People can rephrase pertinant parts of existing suggestions if wanted, and have the orginal available for reference, while completely untouched suggestions could be copied pretty much wholesale if necessary.

[Pilsu]

There's nothing similar between room based workshops and custom ones. Did you even read it? And how exactly is hauling improvements obsolete? Because he intends to work on the top 10? You don't check things off before they're done.

Your examples are pretty confusing. Do you mean Toady wouldn't know whether religion can be checked off after an improvement arc is done? Seems pretty simple to just delete the one thing and add a new option for the people who want more religion stuff. If it fails to climb the list, I wager we're good.


I think all a reset would accomplish is invalidate the opinions of voters who aren't active on the forums anymore.

[Draco18s]

That reminds me.  I need to do something about the suggestions I hold on the EV system.

[RCIX]

And the obsolete ones, and the bad ones, and.... Might as well just wipe it all out.

[Silverionmox]

I went through the list and there aren't that many suggestions that can be scrapped (even assuming the military will be... revised): see http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=24818.msg1165971#msg1165971 and the following comments. AFAI am concerned the list is pretty much ok except for the proliferation of improved <any large category> items. It would be more productive to have lots of small items that can be implemented relatively quickly, and when these are implemented then those people can vote anew. That dynamic floundered a bit since the last release took rather long, and hence the focus shifted to long-term development and big bag suggestions. But we got the underground diversity!

[Draco18s]

the list is pretty much ok except for the proliferation of improved <any large category> items.

Improved Hauling is a generic "do anything about it" kind of suggestion.  For the most part there are a number of ideas on how to do that, but no one can agree what would be "best" (other than "here's some ideas, let Toady decide") but that everyone wants something done.

Improved Farming is actually pretty specific in that there are several related ideas for "soil quality" and needing more land/more dwarves/more planning in order to feed a full fortress, but that the forums can't agree on the details on which mechanic to use.  But, again, everyone wants something done.

A quick look at some of the others many of them appear as much the same, a few are very specific, but have a generalized title, or are broad "do something about X" but "we'll leave the details to Toady" as opposed to "do it this way" with four more, contradictory "no, do it this other way."  A popular implementation might not be the one Toady wishes to implement and he can't implement all of them.

[Aquillion]

I'l prolly catch flak for this, but can the votes be cleared and the script modified to display the list of suggestions in  random order? Because right now it seems to have a big case of "i vote for the first 3 suggestions"-itis.

It's not just a matter of people blindly choosing the first few and not bothering to read the rest.  The current system encourages people to only vote on things with high vote totals, because you only get three votes, and voting for something with 0 votes (or anything nowhere near the top 10, really) is pretty much throwing your vote away -- nobody will notice the extra vote, so it's not going to raise the item at all; and you only get three, so people naturally want to spend them where they will matter (mainly, trying to make a distinction between the stuff that actually has high totals.)

Which is problematic, because it tends to lead towards people using their few limited votes on the biggest, most sweeping suggestions they can.  If you have a suggestion for, say, some very small specific relatively easy change, very few people are going to spend a vote on it when they could instead spend that vote on "TOTALLY OVERHAUL HAULING" or "ADD THIS MASSIVE PLOT-ARC" or "IMPROVE EVERYTHING IN ALL WAYS."

The real problem is the limited number of votes.

[RCIX]

I agree with more votes needed though, maybe 10?

[Silverionmox]

the list is pretty much ok except for the proliferation of improved <any large category> items.

Improved Hauling is a generic "do anything about it" kind of suggestion.  For the most part there are a number of ideas on how to do that, but no one can agree what would be "best" (other than "here's some ideas, let Toady decide") but that everyone wants something done.

Improved Farming is actually pretty specific in that there are several related ideas for "soil quality" and needing more land/more dwarves/more planning in order to feed a full fortress, but that the forums can't agree on the details on which mechanic to use.  But, again, everyone wants something done.

A quick look at some of the others many of them appear as much the same, a few are very specific, but have a generalized title, or are broad "do something about X" but "we'll leave the details to Toady" as opposed to "do it this way" with four more, contradictory "no, do it this other way."  A popular implementation might not be the one Toady wishes to implement and he can't implement all of them.

I agree that there are good reasons for voting on large categories, but it has the effect of making the eternal voting list very static and the information value very low. It could be avoided by having a main list of general categories (what needs attention) and sublists of how to improve these categories. More votes could workl, but I think the top ten will still be mostly static and imprecise.

[Draco18s]

I agree that there are good reasons for voting on large categories, but it has the effect of making the eternal voting list very static and the information value very low. It could be avoided by having a main list of general categories (what needs attention) and sublists of how to improve these categories. More votes could workl, but I think the top ten will still be mostly static and imprecise.

If you can figure out how to make that work, by all means, write it up.

[Aquillion]

I agree with more votes needed though, maybe 10?

No, I think that any method with limited votes would be a bad idea.  People should be able to, in some fashion, weigh in on every single thing on the list.  If you add more votes, you'll just extend it a bit further down, but you'll still end up with the same effect, where people will go for the biggest most impressive stuff first.

[RCIX]

But then there's no point in having votes at all. We really need a system, like having upvotes and downvotes, and enforcing suggestions have a thread for commentating on it. I'd work up something myself but i only know Lua and unless whoever manages the server can install that for use...

[RCIX]

Ok, i did a little thinking/looking, and what we really need is the ability to vote directly on suggestion topics. I found this mod for the SMF, which ought to do pretty well. http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1890

[Pilsu]

Ever occur to you that maybe the list is static because more people are interested in spending their few votes on pathfinding and other seemingly important improvements instead of trivialities? 10 votes is all it needs to leave room for choice. We don't need to start spamming votes left and right on every issue.

And ultimately, we're being asked what we want worked on first, not what we want in specifically. Linking a suggestion to a specific official thread would just make make it a shopping list, not a general direction we want the game to go in.