FWLIW, passive users of Apache projects generally expect and get very little direct say in what features get actively developed and put back into the project.
OTOH, people who actively contribute, by either supplying patches, or filing quality and timely bug reports with enough details for some developer to easily resolve the issue for them, do enjoy some say in the overall direction of the feature sets. OTOH, simply counting votes on issues is not one of the considerations that goes into this sort of mindset most Apache projects have. HTH >________________________________ > From: Rob Weir <robw...@apache.org> >To: dev@openoffice.apache.org >Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 11:25 AM >Subject: Re: A question about existing practices > >On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:22 AM, Keith N. McKenna ><keith.mcke...@comcast.net> wrote: >> Rob Weir wrote: >>> >>> On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 6:39 PM, Andrea Pescetti <pesce...@apache.org> >>> wrote: >>>> >>>> Hagar Delest wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> if the votes are reset, I'll take it as a huge setback for the users >>>>> decisions >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Resetting votes does not make sense. There is a limit on how many bugs a >>>> user can vote for and votes can be reallocated, so it isn't necessarily >>>> true >>>> that an old bug has more votes just because it's been around for longer. >>>> But >>>> it's true that we are not advertising the possibility to vote as much as >>>> we >>>> used to: many new users are likely unaware that they can vote. >>>> >>> >>> I was curious to check my intuition on this. So with a bit of effort >>> I was able to get the following data out of Bugzilla, showing the >>> yearly percentage of enhancement or feature issue types have had at >>> least one vote. So it is showing for issues entered in that year, >>> what % of those issues have received votes. >>> >>> Year %Votes >>> 2002 45% >>> 2003 39% >>> 2004 34% >>> 2005 31% >>> 2006 30% >>> 2007 24% >>> 2008 23% >>> 2009 23% >>> 2010 14% >>> 2011 5% >>> 2012 6% >>> 2013 2% >>> >>> I see a trend here, a very strong one. Plot it and you see a nearly >>> linear trend (r = - 0.98). Older issues have received more votes >>> than new issuers. >>> >>> There could be several reasons for this: >>> >>> 1) Older issues are better issues because they were entered by smarter >>> people. But then the linear trend is then odd. Did people become >>> less smart in such a regular way over the years? >>> >>> 2) Older issues have been around longer so they have had a longer >>> opportunity to be voted on. This very naturally would explain a >>> linear trend. >>> >>> 3) Users have become less interested in or aware of voting. But >>> again, it hard to explain the gradual linear trend. Why for example, >>> would users in 2010 entering an issue not even vote for their own >>> issue 90% of the time, but in 2002 nearly half of those issues >>> received votes? >>> >> Or it could be that people just got frustrated over time that nothing ever >> happened and stopped voting or moved on to other applications that better >> met there needs. >> The bottom line is that we do not know why it happened and trying to make >> decisions based on it does not make sense. >> > >Oh, but I don't need to explain why this has happened. I only need to >note that it did happen to question whether the older vote counts are >an accurate reflection of user preferences today. > >-Rob > > >> Regards >> Keith >> >> >>> In any case, this is one reason why I take the old vote counts cum >>> grano salis. For whatever reason the votes are biased toward older >>> issues. >>> >>> -Rob >>> >>>>>> [Rob] Google Moderator was far easier to use for users than BZ is. That >>>>>> is >>>>>> >>>>>> why we received far more feedback with Moderator. I'm sorry that the >>>>>> troglodytes don't like that. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Not only troglodytes. Many users interpret the votes in Bugzilla as their >>>> opportunity to influence the OpenOffice decisions (and would find >>>> offensive >>>> to be assimilated to troglodytes). Honestly, except for a couple of >>>> occasions years ago when a review of "most voted issues" was done, votes >>>> are >>>> scarcely taken into consideration. This is the problem. >>>> >>>> There is room for improvement here: you once posted the most voted >>>> issues, >>>> but if we made it regularly and we committed to fixing the most voted >>>> issues >>>> (or, more realistically, to direct to the most voted issues people who >>>> want >>>> to help with development or sponsor it), things would improve. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> Andrea. >>>> >>>> >>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org >>>> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org >>>> >> >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org >> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org >> > >--------------------------------------------------------------------- >To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org >For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org > > > >
