RFC Process Change Suggestion

[Pony99CA]

Erik asked me to post this here (see the phpBB Falling Behind? topic on phpbb.com), so here I am. I won't copy all of the discussion, just my idea, but feel free to read that for background.

I suggest having a phpBB Requirements/RFC forum on phpBB.com. Lots of people have asked in the past where to submit feature requests (none of the forums there really seem to allow it, but people -- including me -- do it anyway) and this would give them a perfect venue for that.

Once an RFC was accepted, discussion would move to Area51 and the topic on phpbb.com could be locked with an Accepted post linking to the Area51 RFC discussion. If any questions arose requiring user input, the topic on phpbb.com would be unlocked and the question posted there. (I'm not sure whether it's better to just leave the topic there unlocked for more discussion about the question or just put a link back to an Area51 RFC post containing the question and lock the topic on phpbb.com again.)

This board is primarily for developers, not users, but users often have reasonable (and unreasonable, of course ) requests. However, many probably won't ever come here, whether is because they have to register again, because it's more technical or whatever, so their requirements might not get a fair hearing. Having requirements start on phpbb.com would be more friendly to the general users, while keeping RFC details and discussions here.

What do you think?

Steve

[DarkBeing]

Actually I think it is a good idea. Might add an even clearer picture of what the phpbb community would really like to see in the core of the phpbb board.

[Erik Frèrejean]

I partly agree, it should be easier for users to suggest RFC's/features than having to go to a separate board and got through the hassle of registering again. Although a feature request forum will just result in a MOD requests forum type of chaos which is pretty much untraceable. Ideally you would have some sort of voting system and any RFC/feature with more that "x" votes gets posted here for further discussion/implementation.

[wGEric]

There was some work on !ponies a while back that was suppose to be a feature request system. Finishing that would be a good idea and provide a way for users to vote on features they would like.

[Oleg]

I would say that as long as area51 has and is the authoritative source for all important development-related information, I see no harm in having a forum on phpbb.com where users can discuss phpbb development.

In other words, as long as actual development work continues to take place here, if the users want to discuss development in a less formal, so to speak, environment I don't see why we should prevent this.

Therefore the question really is whether phpbb.com management is ok with adding a development discussion forum or forums to phpbb.com.

I suggest having a phpBB Requirements/RFC forum on phpBB.com. Lots of people have asked in the past where to submit feature requests (none of the forums there really seem to allow it, but people -- including me -- do it anyway) and this would give them a perfect venue for that.

To use this as an example, you can discuss your feature request on phpbb.com but an RFC on area51 and a ticket in the issue tracker would still be needed to actually implement it.

Once an RFC was accepted, discussion would move to Area51 and the topic on phpbb.com could be locked with an Accepted post linking to the Area51 RFC discussion. If any questions arose requiring user input, the topic on phpbb.com would be unlocked and the question posted there. (I'm not sure whether it's better to just leave the topic there unlocked for more discussion about the question or just put a link back to an Area51 RFC post containing the question and lock the topic on phpbb.com again.)

Locking and unlocking is overkill, in my opinion, and does not really add anything.

[igorw]

In other words, as long as actual development work continues to take place here, if the users want to discuss development in a less formal, so to speak, environment I don't see why we should prevent this.

Agreed. And yes, having a working !ponies would be nice (in fact, that would be the only reasonable way to have the community propose and discuss new features). Not sure if I have the time to do it though.

[igorw]

Proposal.

Use http://userecho.com/ for collecting ideas. For $60 a month we get single sign-on and pretty much anything we need. I don't think anyone has the time to build this thing properly, so we might as well just use something existing.

See here for an example: http://sublimetext.userecho.com/.

Note: I haven't tried it in depth yet, this is just a first idea.

[igorw]

Noxwizard just pointed me towards: http://www.ideatorrent.org/ Looks decent.

[callumacrae]

Noxwizard just pointed me towards: http://www.ideatorrent.org/ Looks decent.

+1, looks good

[bonelifer]

Noxwizard just pointed me towards: http://www.ideatorrent.org/ Looks decent.

+1, looks good

+1, though I'll also throw this one out there as well: http://bbyidx.com/ - https://github.com/BBYOpen/BBYIDX