User:Zhani/copyofnoteonsuggestions

Hi! Having seen how the suggestions system is [not] working, I agree with many of your complaints. It's quite obviously broken. Partly it's the people, as you point out. Responses to suggestions can be incredibly rude, dismissive, and antagonistic. This appears to be because many people have a vested interest in certain aspects of the status quo; especially things that make aspects of PK or griefing easier (eg. anonymous overbarricading or barrier removal). I'm a new user to the game, and this aspect of the community is almost enough to make me give up playing.

The next is the dupe system. A strong idea, that fails to gain an acceptance vote of 2/3rd majority, is henceforth forever doomed, because any similar idea can simply be marked "dupe".

So very simply, if an idea does not win overwhelming submission on its first go, it can never succeed. This completely ignores future changes to the game, changing playerbase, or minor tweaks to the idea that make it more workable. The people with the power in this system are those who want things to stay the way they are, no matter how good or bad they may be.

There's clearly a lot of interest in flashlights, rifles, and numerous other suggestions that have been made. Yet these ideas are simply killed 'because they have been suggested in the past'. This doesn't allow for any improving of the idea to find something that works.

Game balance is too often used as an excuse to kill ideas. Game balance is very important; but part of developing and improving a game, is dealing with balance changes when implementing new features. It's simply work to do, not something that forever prevents changes from being made.

I notice from this page that many of your complaints have been echoed before: The_REAL_Suggestion_Guidelines.

How can it be reformed? Should a Suggestions System Reform project be started? Can we get people on board?

Supposedly, the purpose of the suggestion system is to present good ideas to Kevan on a regular basis. If good ideas are being killed off, users who make suggestions are being attacked and discouraged, and there's no process to improve minor problems with an idea, then obviously it's not fulfilling its purpose.

A voting system by random wiki users or game players who may have strong biases they are promoting doesn't serve the purpose of filtering suggestions so the best go to Kevan. A system where it's overwhelmingly easier to permanently and irrevocably kill an idea rather than tweak and improve them so they become before is broken.

I have a few thoughts:

• Get rid of unaccountable public voting. It's obviously too easy to just vote "kill" "dupe" "spam" on everything, and belittle the suggester in the process. This doesn't promote improving the game at all. It's a negative for the community, the wiki, and the game.
• Establish a Suggestions Team, who are charged with impartially evaluating ideas 'and assisting the suggester in tweaking the idea to make it workable'.
• Go through a round of Public Input. Note this is not voting, this is simply comments reflecting how the idea is received: expressions of support, or specifically identified problems with the idea. Establish guidelines that require comments to be constructive and not insulting.
• Others who are interested in a particular idea can become involved in the process to help tweak it as well.
• If consensus among the Suggestions Team and public input is that an idea is unworkable or game-breaking, shelve it. That doesn't mean it's permanently dead. Ideas, like characters in UD, should be able to be revivified if there's renewed interest in it.
• If the public response is somewhat positive, keep working on it, and submit it to review again. If the submitter and (again, as impartial as possible Suggestions Team) feel an idea still has merit, this process can continue to repeat. If an idea is just not gaining traction, or there's still plenty of valid criticism, go back and fix the problem parts that remain.
• Any idea whose reception is strongly positive goes into the pile for Kevan. That doesn't mean it needs a certain percentage of votes; but rather that the community has expressed support for it and there's little remaining the way of valid criticism.

This would make the suggestion process iterative, and geared towards improvement. Ideas that obviously won't go anywhere can be gently killed off in consultation with the originator. Those that have some merit but obvious need a lot of work in order to make them feasible for the game have an ongoing process of improvement and community participation. Those that are great right from the start can quickly go through team evaluation, public input, and get put onto the recommended pile for Kevan.

--Zhani 20:35, 31 August 2008 (BST)