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[RCIX]

This still doesn't answer my question: what do we do with the small unrelated suggestions (like Longer Chains or my Paint Stuff suggestion)? thow it in a "misc suggestions" suggestion, or just not suggest them at all?

[Pilsu]

I see little reason to vote for everything. Toady can throw such things in on his own if he feels like it.

[NW_Kohaku]

This still doesn't answer my question: what do we do with the small unrelated suggestions (like Longer Chains or my Paint Stuff suggestion)? thow it in a "misc suggestions" suggestion, or just not suggest them at all?

I believe the answer to that was that things like "Longer Chains" or "Paint Stuff" are probably never going to become top-the-charts popular on their own, as it would apply to the desires of such a small percentage of the voting base.  It would likely, however, be better to suggest things as part of a broader sweep, such as the Improved Mechanics thread, which really explored the way that we could have automated systems in DF to take advantage of the power system. 

This is, in part, why I am frequently mentioning in many of these smaller suggestion threads that modding should be able to replicate many of the suggestions, and that we should encourage Toady to give us more flexibility in the raws, so that we can produce these sorts of things ourselves, as giving us the tools to make a thousand little suggestions come true ourselves is better than hand-picking a half-dozen little suggestions to be hard-coded.

This would, in fact, be one of the strengths of the ESV system as it stands: by making people prioritize, it tends to promote suggestions, even small suggestions, that have the broadest demand.

That said, once again, Toady at least attempts to read all the suggestions on this board (although the more the board gets flooded with redundant suggestions, the more and more he'll likely get behind,) and he is an intelligent and capable person who can recognize when some ideas are fairly easy to impliment and would make at least a smaller portion of the playerbase happy for minimal cost to himself, or can simply throw in something because he just plain likes the idea himself.

[Silverionmox]

The way it seems to be going is that Toady chooses which arc/theme to work on, and then picks up fitting small suggestions from his own notes, important and bookmarked threads from the boards, and the eternal suggestion voting. The big compilation threads are already known and bookmarked; there is no need to give them extra attention in the voting list. In addition, let Toady choose the order of the arc he'll work on himself: that's a matter of design rather than player whim. It's also pointless, since all the arcs will be worked on eventually. Smaller suggestions however, risk falling through the cracks. Especially the older ones: a small suggestion made somewhere in a thread in 2007 is completely forgotten by now if Toady didn't make a note the first time (even in a compilation list it's buried between other stuff); if it is in the voting list, it can potentially get a new life when other items on the list are completed and people are looking for new cool ideas to vote on.

[NW_Kohaku]

The way it seems to be going is that Toady chooses which arc/theme to work on, and then picks up fitting small suggestions from his own notes, important and bookmarked threads from the boards, and the eternal suggestion voting. The big compilation threads are already known and bookmarked; there is no need to give them extra attention in the voting list. In addition, let Toady choose the order of the arc he'll work on himself: that's a matter of design rather than player whim. It's also pointless, since all the arcs will be worked on eventually. Smaller suggestions however, risk falling through the cracks. Especially the older ones: a small suggestion made somewhere in a thread in 2007 is completely forgotten by now if Toady didn't make a note the first time (even in a compilation list it's buried between other stuff); if it is in the voting list, it can potentially get a new life when other items on the list are completed and people are looking for new cool ideas to vote on.

But that again ignores the effect of prioritization.  ESV doesn't simply ask you "which of these ideas do you like", it asks you "which of these are the three ideas that you most want to see done very soon?"

This is the difference between simply having a thumbs up or down, and having only a limited number of votes so you have to pick the most important suggestions to you.  People arguing against ESV seem to never really address this design goal.

It's one thing when there seems to be another "Seige Weapons" thread every other day, it's another when wheelbarrows attracts 10% (or whatever the actual fraction may be) of the total votes in the ESV.

[Silverionmox]

(I wasn't arguing for unlimited votes..., just small vote subjects) When these ideas are small, it's actually possible that one of them really is done within a month, after which you can reallocate the vote. As opposed to the idea collections, which take a year to create, implement, test and debug.

[Pilsu]

If you broke up improved mechanics into smaller sections, it'd just eat up a bigger chunk of the top 10.

10 votes is all we need to give smaller stuff a chance.

[Silverionmox]

If you broke up improved mechanics into smaller sections, it'd just eat up a bigger chunk of the top 10.

Yes, but then we can say it's implemented or it's not implemented. Collection thread will linger forever. And let's face it, Toady has already planned the next three arcs to work on. ES voting won't change that. He can always squeeze in a few smaller items, however.

[Draco18s]

If you broke up improved mechanics into smaller sections, it'd just eat up a bigger chunk of the top 10.

Yes, but then we can say it's implemented or it's not implemented. Collection thread will linger forever. And let's face it, Toady has already planned the next three arcs to work on. ES voting won't change that. He can always squeeze in a few smaller items, however.

Look, there's nothing wrong with group suggestions.  When something gets done the creator should mark it as "completed for now."  The people who voted for it should vote for something else and let the group suggestion linger at the bottom so Toady can work on other things.

Even if people don't do this, Toady already plans on ignoring those suggestions for a version.

There's an entire string of posts about it (starting here and continuing here) already.

[Silverionmox]

Of course, that's what I'm saying. Toady chooses the arcs and the direction of the development himself, he ignores the collections in the ESV, as you say. That's what I mean when I say that collections aren't useful to put in an ESV list. The ESV is particularly useful for suggestion small things in high demand that can be squeezed in relatively quickly, or to bring small things under attention that would otherwise risk being ignored in the big threads. The collection suggestions are ignored by Toady, would need to be ignored by the voters if there was some work done and have no impact on the development process: Toady will do more for mechanics, farming, etc, and he does take the big threads into account, whether there are big items about them in the ESV or not. Take, for example, interface improvements. It's long known that he wants to delay it as long as possible, probably until the transition to beta. Therefore the big interface item is an absolute waste of a vote. The small interface items, however, have a chance to be slipped in: therefore all the people who voted on the big one should vote on the most irritating small one... so they'll actually have some influence.

[Draco18s]

Toady chooses the arcs and the direction of the development himself, he ignores the collections in the ESV, as you say. That's what I mean when I say that collections aren't useful to put in an ESV list.

No no no no no.

Toady looks at the list and sees Underground Diversity and More Machines in the top 10, so he works on them and releases a version.
A few votes get reallocated, but the two suggestions remain in the top 10.
Toady looks at the list for some stuff to work on for the next version and skips those two items, works on something else, and releases a version
Things shuffle around a bit, but the two suggestions remain top 10.
Toady looks at the list and sees Underground Diversity and More Machines in the top 10, so he works on them some more and releases a version.

[Silverionmox]

So that still boils down to: Toady implements a few specific items... but not the ones people want, but the ones Toady thinks they might want. That's not efficient, the ESV is a way to communicate the desires of the community to Toady, after all. Lack of precision is bad when communicating ideas. The only entry Toady has commented on is "improve the game in all possible ways", and there he said: this suggestion is very broad. To be precise, it's so broad it's utterly useless. More precise ideas are more useful, because it's easier to say: I'll implement this, I have implemented this or I'm not going to implement this. With broader suggestions, the answer to these questions is inevitably: maybe, to some extent or probably not.

To a certain extent, this is matter of strategy of people who think it's more important for the ESV suggestions to "win" the vote rather than to communicate your desires clearly. As it is there are sufficient discrete items in the ESV to have some use, but in any case, it's up to Toady to indicate how useful the ESV is. As you say, he'll skip the broader suggestions - which is fine for me, because I didn't waste my vote in a suggestion that covers half the game.

[Jiri Petru]

You still ignore my argument that smaller suggestions are pretty user-unfriendly. You can't expect people to be able to read and keep in mind several hundreds small suggestions that often vary by minor specifics. I can't do that personally, I admit I've never bothered to read the list past the first half, because by that time I was already forgetting what I read in the beginning. With small suggestion, the only real effect is that people vote for things in the first part of the list and don't bother reading more. Someone argued for opening the list to more players. Enforcing small suggestions only would have the exact opposite effect - making the eternal voting more elitist.

And that's not to mention how would you handle it technically? Any idea for a real implementation of suggestion limits? Who would judge what is small and what is large? How would you set the rules? Where would the dividing line between small and large be? Even if you managed to answer all of this, you'd find out everyone feels it differently and that people keep posting what you consider as a "large" suggestion. Who would moderate it then? Toady wouldn't.

I say, leave things develop naturally. Don't set any arbitrary limits. It's the easiest and (IMHO) even the most effective way.

---

Toady looks at the list and sees Underground Diversity and More Machines in the top 10, so he works on them and releases a version.
A few votes get reallocated, but the two suggestions remain in the top 10.
Toady looks at the list for some stuff to work on for the next version and skips those two items, works on something else, and releases a version
Things shuffle around a bit, but the two suggestions remain top 10.
Toady looks at the list and sees Underground Diversity and More Machines in the top 10, so he works on them some more and releases a version.

The two would stay because people who voted for them have already stopped caring and don't bother to come back and relocate their votes  Really, the list needs periodical resets even if it is just for deleting "dead" votes. I personally am for periodical wiping of the suggestions too, to delete "dead" or "abandoned" suggestions.

[Draco18s]

The two would stay because people who voted for them have already stopped caring and don't bother to come back and relocate their votes  Really, the list needs periodical resets even if it is just for deleting "dead" votes. I personally am for periodical wiping of the suggestions too, to delete "dead" or "abandoned" suggestions.

Back when it was originally a concern (see page 2 of this thread) the votes would be cleared, and then under the assumption that it managed to ranky highly again Toady wouldn't work on it until he'd released another major/semi-major version recognizing that people wanted "more" of whatever it was, but not working on it in order to take a break.

So that still boils down to: Toady implements a few specific items... but not the ones people want, but the ones Toady thinks they might want. That's not efficient, the ESV is a way to communicate the desires of the community to Toady, after all.

Or you know, create a top ten that had items that weren't ones he worked on recently by grabbing items #11 and #12. >..>  Its not like he'd go, "well, of the top 10, I just worked on two items, so...I'm going to do #23, #46, #112, and number #116 and none from the top 10."

The EVS is "what people want to see next."  If they just got something, they can wait to see even more.

[RCIX]

The EVS is "what people want to see next."  If they just got something, they can wait to see even more.

Then those suggestions are just eating up space and it makes it harder for Toady to know what we would want instead of those. And just taking from a little lower on the list isn't going to work; maybe players would vote for something low on the list right now but it would go up high if they had a free vote.