Gen EDGE

When an idea is first created, it is placed in New status.  After 90 days, the idea's status will be changed as follows:

• If the idea has only one vote, it will be moved to Wish-Listed (if it's something that I think is very useful) or Not Planned due to lack of activity
• If the idea has less than 10 votes, it will be moved to Wish-Listed
• Otherwise, the idea will move to Under Consideration

Ideas that have been moved to Wish-Listed or Under Consideration may still be voted on.  If an idea is Wish-Listed and receives 10 or more votes, it will be moved to Under Consideration.  Ideas that are Under Consideration will be moved to Currently Planned based on the number of votes, the resources available to work on the idea and the time needed to implement the idea.  In general, the more votes an idea gets, the better its chances for moving into the Currently Planned status.  Also note that I really hope that the threshold for votes will move higher in the future; with a community of over 500 followers, surely more than 10 people can be bothered to vote for (or against) any given Idea.

In addition to the criteria listed above, the number and type of comments will also play a role in the decision.  Ideas that have not been discussed as to why it should be implemented or how the implementation might look may remain in their current state regardless of other criteria.  The idea (yes, I meant to say that) is to get a lot of feedback and interest in Ideas before they are worked on.

It is assumed that anyone voting for an Idea will be willing to participate in the monthly customer validation calls.  The call itself only lasts about an hour but it will be an opportunity for you to have a say in the direction and the type of the implementation that is taken for your (and others) Ideas.  You will also have the opportunity to download the current build of the product in order to have hands-on experience and to allow for a greater feel as to the way that the Ideas are being implemented.

I intend to start looking at Ideas on a more regular basis on the first Friday of every month starting with this coming Friday, October 2nd.  Please feel free to check out the Ideas and comment on them as well as providing feedback to this discussion as well.

One other thing that I'd like to hear about on this discussion: The EDGE board requires that voting for enhancements be on a one company / one vote basis.  This ensures that larger companies aren't able to dominate the direction the product takes by ensuring that only their Ideas are implemented.  However, feedback from multiple people within a company is always welcome and usually very helpful in understanding what a given Idea is about.  Note that, as this community does not require any information to be given that indicates what company a user is working for, ensuring one company / one vote may be a bit difficult.  I'd appreciate hearing any thoughts you might have on the subject.

John,

First and foremost, thanks for the clarity on the lifecycle of an idea, and what's required to get it into review.  This clears things up for me in many ways, so it's appreciated.

With respect to vote counts, I agree - 10 is rather anaemic, but it's a reasonable proportion of those that appear to visit and comment on the community on a regular basis, rather than just those registered.  Getting this number up would be fantastic, but I think will take a concerted effort by both CA and the active members to encourage those who are a part of the community to participate, both those registered and those developers in the wild.  How specifically to achieve this, I'm not sure, but I think the increasing feedback on ideas, and reduced time to answer, will hopefully go a ways to improving the usefulness.  Perhaps more day to day useful content for developers would help attract as well, to give them a reason to come back.  I would also expect while there's 500 here, there's probably 2-3x as many who aren't even registered.

With respect to vote value, I think you'd struggle to even get 10 votes right now, if you restricted it back to a single vote per company.  While I certainly appreciate you don't want the development of Gen to be skewed by a single powerful voting block, at least as evidenced in the community's interactions so far, there doesn't appear to be that occurring when you take into account the regular voters.  There's the technical challenge as well (do you even have the capability with the current community software to restrict such voting?), but I would honestly take an optimistic view in regards to voting, and attempt to deal with it when or if it arises.  Even then, you could consider weighting the votes from a single company, rather than immediately restricting it back to 1 per company.  It's a tough one - should a small company of 3 developers who are primarily in application maintenance mode have the same voting power as a larger company of 20 who are active and wanting to push Gen forward into newer arenas?  Dwarfed obviously the moment one with 100+ weighs in.  It's a tough one to answer, and I don't think there's a simple solution.  And I don't think you need a site ID to register and participate, so if one is sufficiently nefarious, they could hide behind anonymous registrations.

I'd suggest taking the feedback and votes you're getting now, as is, while trying to get the overall numbers up at which point you might reconsider voting values.  You probably don't want to isolate those already prepared to vote, even if from the same company.

Outstanding response, Daniel_Stratton, thank you very much for your feedback!  As you can tell, changing the status of Ideas is not going to be a black and white decision for the most part and any help the community can provide via voting and comments will be great.

As a reminder to all, the first pass at implementing this process will be this Friday, October 2, so please vote early and vote often!

I think limiting votes to one per company is too narrow.  We have two large systems written in CA Gen with very different technologies and needs.  I'd like each system within my company to have a vote.

bkelling, I don't think we can do voting based on systems installed but I welcome more than one person from your company voting and participating.  As Daniel_Stratton alluded to previously, until we get more participation and more voting, I think it will be difficult to enforce one company / one vote so the decisions for changing the status will rely on the total number of votes as much as how many votes came from each company.  So the more the merrier!

The second pass at implementing this process took place Friday, November 6, so please continue to vote early and vote often!