NewFeatureRequestSystemFeedback

Page broken?
The message "Fatal error: Cannot redeclare FeatureRequest::$votesperday in /home/.gaysybianheater/dmazzoni/audacityteam.org/FeatureRequest.php on line 99" seems to be very common. Is this project still alive?

October 25th using Firefox 1.5 on Windows.

July 5th 2007 littlebob: same error as above except I am on Internet Explorer 6

August, 2007: I'm seeing the same message from Firefox 2.0.0.6.

The new Feature Request system
Dave Fancella has written a new [Feature Request system] that we would like to use to replace the existing Wiki page. We will still make use of the Wiki as a way for people to discuss the details of the features, but we're hoping that this script will make the voting simpler.

Please give it a try and then leave your feedback here by editing this page.

Note that until we have finished beta-testing it, the votes don't really count, since we'll have two different voting systems going simultaneously.

For directions on how to use the script, read the FeatureRequestDirections from Dave.

From Dave:

Ok, shortened the page and moved the directions. Very little feedback, and I've only spotted one specific bug so far and fixed it (with another reported through email). Any other bugs found? Comments? Etc?

Just had a look at the page - like the look of it muchly! Definitely makes the feature requests easier to read. One possible suggestion though. Would it be possible to change the graphic of the vote tally so that it's relative to the highest number of votes cast to an individual feature? For example, the feature with the highest number of votes currently has about 24 votes, yet the bar denoting it is barely a fifth of the way across the graphic. Could it be made so that graphic was 100%, and say a feature with 15 votes was a little over half way? Just a thought - everything else appears to be pretty funky: Good work!

Dave: Done. It's in the new version, but it hasn't been posted yet. Soon, hopefully. ;)

It looks very good. why isn't it being used yet? i was kind of annoyed just now to realize that my votes on it didn't count. you should say so at the top of the page itself.

From August

The current setup of tasks is confusing. Automatic phrasing of audio files is repeated a number of times for example, which makes it hard to understand what is going on.

Dave: This is a bug that I'm trying to track down. I keep meaning to ask Dominic, and I don't know if I have actually asked, for a dump of the database, which will point to the where the bug actually exists (ie the script is either writing duplicate records to the database or it is reading the same record multiple times, or both (!) ).

How about setting a small, clean live installation and seeing where it goes from there?

Dave: I can do that. Anybody else want to do that?

From Dan:

The layout is very confusing in that the word "Votable" is nowhere near the link "Vote"! Move them closer together!

From StevenChamberlain

I can't tell what order the list has been sorted in... but I'd think the features with the most votes should generally be near the top. Also, all those duplicates are confusing...

From Phil:

Needs a one-line abstract of each item, or some other way to provide more info than just the title.

I concur with comment about the vote graphic. Having the "number of votes" bars so small along the left side of the graphic column really doesn't tell us anything.

Categorization - group similar items together?

Sort options?

--

From Tim: Showing the same item (for example, "Automatic phrasing of audio files") over and over is confusing, and then, when you examine one of them, they show perhaps over a hundred items in the history column, several links at the left, and so on. (But I see this may be the bug item that was posted earlier.) Today I added an item, "Long file names in Mac OSX"; I wasn't sure if I should make it top-level or add it to "Imports and Exports". But when I saw the hundreds of items in I&E's History column, I decided to make it top level, figuring it would be buried if it were in I&E.

The point is that, well, this system is just darn confusing! And I'm a geek, at that!

Jasper:
 * due to the known bug (repetitions) it is impossible to judge, maybe you should only put a 'look&feel' until you fixed it.
 * The descriptions should also be more clear, e.g. "overwrite option" should be something like "allow overwrite file (always/never/warn)". We don't seem to be able to edit the title, that would probably fix it?
 * Furthermore it would be nice to be able to add several categories per item (i.s.o. one parent), by which we can filter/sort/search, so if I have a particular feature request, I can find it quicker. (E.g. warn on illegal filename-characters in labelnames for exporting multiple files, could be in "exporting" and "labels")
 * Maybe you could use the feature-request-tracker from SourceForge (I've used it for TortoiseCVS ), and kindly ask them to add a vote-system to it?

Not too fond of the new feature request page (bulk, clarity), or the old one. Have you thought about a "Forums" scheme? Major categories, then sub-categories. For example, I'd like to add some thoughts about TEMPO/measures/beats/snapping, and some other thoughts about MIDI. Where do I do that? Off-the-shelf "Forum" software would let people divide, subdivide, organize the discussion themselves. This would make "voting" difficult, but are developers going to go more by votes or the strengths of the various arguments and suggestions?

As of August 26, incredibly slow, and many repetitions of the same thing. Gave up on using it. Shows potential, though, if it would work. -- Ron Jeffries

Seems to "cheat" me of votes: If I vote once, the request will get one vote alright, but it will take 2 votes off my "votes left".

Also very slow today. I wonder if the repetition bug is simply due to impatient people resubmitting (multiclicking)?

Otherwise a very nice work. Much better than the old page.

Accessing it is _very_ slow. Some links don't work (e.g., clicking on "Automatic phrasing (segmenting) audio files" generates an "Internal Server Error" and a 404 error

On feature request page (http://audacityteam.org/FeatureRequest.php) the "Label endpoint positioning" generates a Server Error.