User voting on bugs & features

[alexis-]

I propose to develop a small web application that uses GitHub's API to fetch all open issues with a set of specified GitHub labels (e.g. bug, enhancement, ..)

• All open GitHub issues would be listed on the website (in a single list),
• Issues could be filtered using:
  • Repository (SMA, Plugins.PDF, Plugins.XXX, Documentation, Website, etc.)
  • Label (enhancement, bug, ...)
• Issues could be sorted by vote count
• Users could vote on issues to help determine their priority. Please give input:
  • Allow guest voting ? (many user feedback apps do, like Microsoft's voice)
  • Limit number of votes ? Reset every month ?
  • Something else ?
• Discord bot would display the top voted feature requests and incite users to vote for their favorites

[alexis-]

@nikedinikedi @dumbyme

[dumbyme]

My thoughts - at this stage and time, we do need another system/application to build and handle. This takes away focus and time away from goals of SMA and community needs.

My recommendation would be to follow a labeling system. 1) Create labels such as pri-high, pri-med, pri-low,pri-someday. 2) All issues once in a funnel (as in raised) will need to be vetted and labeled for core-developers to be picked up - such as categorizing an issue as an issue/bug or enhancement. We could assign another label - say 'under review' so anyone viewing a list of issues gets a quick view of actions. 3) core-developers can reassign priority as per their backlog/queue of work. this team would irrespective assign label 'reviewed' . This means necessary action has been thought and will be taken to next step (either in backlog/queue or rejected). 4) @alexis- has superpowers to override any of these labels.

This is work in progress please provide feedback. I suggest keeping as few labels as possible and keeping labels as a way to manage the issues. Having multiple systems tend to complicate day to day tasks.

[alexis-]

My thoughts - at this stage and time, we do need another system/application to build and handle. This takes away focus and time away from goals of SMA and community needs. I assume you meant **don't** need ? I agree that this is not the priority right now.

My recommendation would be to follow a labeling system.

1. Create labels such as pri-high, pri-med, pri-low,pri-someday. Yes, that was also my thinking, although not very satisfactory and annoying to manage. We might start to need them soon though, the number of issues are growing much faster than I can close them.

That being said, the aim of this proposal was meant to address the possibility of letting users participate in the process of making SMA better, more than it was addressing prioritizing tasks from an internal perspective. That is, even if such a platform were to be implemented, we would still need a way to prioritize items internally, independently of user's preferences.

2. All issues once in a funnel (as in raised) will need to be vetted and labeled for core-developers to be picked up - such as categorizing an issue as an issue/bug or enhancement. We could assign another label - say 'under review' so anyone viewing a list of issues gets a quick view of actions.

I like that 'under review' idea. There has to be a way to do that automatically, either by assigning it by default, or by selecting all issues that lack either enhancement or bug.

3. core-developers can reassign priority as per their backlog/queue of work. this team would irrespective assign label 'reviewed' . This means necessary action has been thought and will be taken to next step (either in backlog/queue or rejected).

I only get to this now. Am I right in my understanding that this is similar in idea to the first paragraph I wrote ?

4. @alexis- has superpowers to override any of these labels.

As long as I am the only Core developer, that's indeed a fact rather than a choice.

This is work in progress please provide feedback. I suggest keeping as few labels as possible and keeping labels as a way to manage the issues. Having multiple systems tend to complicate day to day tasks.

[rajlego]

The easiest solution to what @dumbyme suggested would be to just use Github project boards. I haven't used them much but the kanban view should be enough to get a good look at what issues are pending at a glance.

Aside from that, I think Notion could be a good choice for a more complicated priority system. I already have a replica of SuperMemo's tasklist functions, I could expand it to allow for Kanban view. One issue though is that Notion doesn't have any official API's, though there are some unofficial ones. It would take some work to get something working that would automatically import new issues into the list with appropriate tags.