Whoops. Didn't mean to send that blank reply to Bob's message (I completely agree with everything he said).

Mark

What I hear is that we all would like not only a system for inputting change requests but a method of tracking them and, when they are complete, a simple way to know they are completed.

That's all good but what's missing from it from my perspective are some other steps;

• Each issue/bug  that Mark accepts could have the subject modified with a Hashtag of "Bug"  followed by a number that is a unique ID, e.g. "#Bug 5385", that indicates Mark has decided to  work on it.  That would give us simple way to keep track of what's in process and what's not.
• When Mark considers the Bug/Change/Whatchamacallit complete, one or more authors of the request would be informed by Mark and allowed to perform Testing which would include a review summary of the proposed (changed) documentation
• When complete the testers would issue a final Signoff reply, adding a #Complete or #Reject reply message.  (or whatever is decided for hashtags)

Documentation of how the change/feature works is desirable and a link to that documentation should become part of the information provided when the item is signed off by the testers.  
This doesn't preclude hashtag use for each  step but assigning a number makes searching/tracking progress much easier.

l'm sure Mark tests his changes but no one person or group can possibly cover every variation.
--

Bob Bellizzi

On Fri, Jan 17, 2020 at 12:00 PM, Beth Weld wrote:

I would rather know that my change will never be implemented (for whatever reason; I'm not asking for and individual notification) than wonder.

Obviously I cannot speak for Mark but an earlier post from him suggested the use of hashtags by him to show progress / status, and why I hinted at #SorryButNo and #Done!.

Chris

Whatever method is used, I think a concise list of changes that in line to be implemented would be extremely helpful.  We all ask for changes, but then we have no idea if the suggestion disappears into space or is actually under consideration for implementation. I would rather know that my change will never be implemented (for whatever reason; I'm not asking for and individual notification) than wonder.
Thanks
Beth Weld

On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 06:23 AM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

Please, let's limit this thread to only discussing the possibility of switching off Canny and using hashtags instead,

Mark; May I be so bold as to offer a few suggestions about this?

 

Insofar as any consensus has emerged it would appear to be for a single forum for the “development” of Groups.io. I can see why that in at least some circumstances you might wish or need to distinguish between Basic and Premium / Enterprise Owners but for the moment I am going to assume that you might be able to achieve this from the email addresses of the members of a Development Group; for the moment I will assume that this group will be beta in an ongoing form.

 

I think there are clear benefits to be had from changing the way Hashtags can be used on beta, perhaps to the point where every New Topic has to have at least one hashtag in its subject. However, I think there are major drawbacks to the way hashtags currently operate on beta, and I would suggest the following change.

 

Subscribers should only be able to Use Existing Hashtags. When I started putting this together 3 days ago there were 141 hashtags, which IMHO is simply silly. Now there are 146. Some are clearly near – duplicates of others; others have no obvious meaning and so on. (Some of the duplicates are the result of members misspelling something or using a plural where a singular already existed… or vice versa.) I submit that hashtags could and would be more effective if the list was drastically culled so that subscribers had a list of perhaps a couple of dozen to choose from; hashtags need only be high – level indicators of the subject area – they do not need to dig down into the weeds to pinpoint some precise area of Groups.io operation; if that were the case then every checkbox (etc) would need to have an associated hashtag that had to accompany a topic about it, and that would be absurd. If it were to be found that there was a clear omission from the list of hashtags then it would be the work of seconds to plug the gap, but users would not be able to do it. In addition, as you have already suggested there could be a number of Moderator Only “progress” hashtags that can be retrospectively added to a subject to show its status, ranging from perhaps #SorryButNo to #Done; I think this would be seriously beneficial.

 

I could continue with further suggestions the above is quite enough for now.

 

Chris

My thought - for what it's worth - is that the beta group is where I can raise an issue of Groups.io not doing what I expect/think it should/would like it to - which maybe due to a bug, a not yet requested or implemented feature, or just me not understanding things - without having to work out/guess which; and where this can be discussed to come up with a consensus of what 'correct' behaviour is (or should be). Resulting in bug report, feature request or explanation. And that Canny (or Trello before) is then essentially a (publicly visible/editable) 'to-do' list of feature requests. 

Jeremy

 

Exactly, so the adjective is either superfluous or confusing, depending on who is using it. It serves no purpose. 😊

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

>>>On Thu, Jan 2, 2020 at 07:51 AM, J_Catlady wrote:

“potential”<<<

LOL, I’m not that presumptuous to be certain enough that a “potential” bug, is an “actual” bug. 

For an email address, you could use the term bugreport.

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

Bug reports in the bug forum could be required to be tagged from a set of defined hashtags that relate to specific features, plus an #other tag. That would help.

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

Hashtag, email address, whatever. It’s the qualifier “potential” that’s the problem. 

--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

>>>On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 04:37 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

useful only if bugs are easily identifiable there by subject lines, and there again you fall prey to possible widespread misuse in not identifying bugs properly, etc.<<<

Ok I can buy into the benefit of a bug-specific forum. (BUT good luck with the above caveat.)  Arrrgh. 

>>>

potential-bug@“ could differentiate general support vs bug reporting.

I don't think a hashtag like that will be effective.<<<

On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 12:56 PM, Ken Kloeber wrote:

potential-bug@“ could differentiate general support vs bug reporting.

I don't think a hashtag like that will be effective. You'll get a plethora of people using it identically to #bug, either sometimes or all the time, either because most bugs *are* still potential until they're confirmed (either by the reporting user or others), and/or because they don't know the difference between "general support" and "bug reporting," etc. etc. etc. It will be a complete mish-mosh. 

a forum to browse bugs MIGHT be helpful, but (hopefully) anything posted/searched/browsed for on there would be moot (the bug was subsequently corrected/addressed so the bug will no longer exist

I think a bugs forum might be very helpful so that you could check whether a bug you notice has already been reported and not repeat it (and/or you could add details to the thread when you find a bug you've also experienced; but I think it would be useful only if bugs are easily identifiable there by subject lines, and there again you fall prey to possible widespread misuse in not identifying bugs properly, etc. I don't think anything in a bugs forum would be "moot." First, bugs take awhile to get fixed around here; second, a fixed bug should not be removed from the system, but marked "fixed", so that people still experiencing it can report that it's not really fixed.

Regarding the prioritization of feature suggestions based on user payment rather than suggestion quality, we agree.
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

Ok, so for one, “potential-bug@“ could differentiate general support vs bug reporting.  I do agree a forum to browse bugs MIGHT be helpful, but (hopefully) anything posted/searched/browsed for on there would be moot (the bug was subsequently corrected/addressed so the bug will no longer exist.)

doesn't your point of first running an issue thru GMF makes my point? - a high percentage of suspected bugs would/should get sorted out there (yes, no, maybe from experienced users) and then mark would be bothered with reports of only the true bugs that get filtered/confirmed via GMF (to support@ or whatever.)  For instance - the wiki sidebar issue, sorted out in 4 GMF posts (‘er messages) and confirmed an apparent bug.  GMF seems to have a pretty broad function (maybe wider than Shal intended?!?) and has confirmed a lot of “oddities” I’ll call them - not necessarily bugs that must get addressed. 

On another’s point of paid- vs freeloader-suggested features -
I presume there’s nothing preventing Mark from prioritizing all suggestions any way he desires - he knows which are generated from paid groups.  But having them all discussed on one spot certainly has obvious benefit.  Hopefully the priority would be toward those that carry the greatest improvement overall but that’s mark’s choice whether to play toward paid suggestions.  Another option (certainly not suggesting this) is two sets of coding.  Features added and available to only paid groups, but I truly believe that is, overall, detrimental in most if not every respect. 

>>>On Mon, Dec 30, 2019 at 10:22 AM, Sandi D wrote:

On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 04:19 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

and allow only moderators to create hashtags. 
 

Have you been reading my mind? :)

This will be in my proposal to Mark as it would result in a much smaller and tidier library of hashtags in beta.

Chris

On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 05:03 AM, Samuel Murray wrote:

I thought that hashtags only "work" if they are applied to the first post of a topic.  Wouldn't this mean that you would have to turn beta into a moderated group, so that you can add hashtags before the messages go out?

You could use the MF feature ("moderate the first message of every topic this member starts"), but you would have to apply it to every member, and that is practical only if you make MF a group option, which it currently is not (I've requested it on Canny). Another option would be to require that every topic include at least one hashtag (this is already a group option) and allow only moderators to create hashtags. 
 
--
J

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu

And hashtags also only really work for viewing on the web. Email
recipients may gain some advantage but the threaded views in email
clients largely make them superfluous - if only people would use the
threading features of their email clients of course, many do not (and
hashtags won't help them either).

Although hashtags are occasionally used in the groups I own they are
few and far between. Most people just don't know what they are about
(myself included...).

Dave

On 1 Jan 2020 at 5:03, Samuel Murray wrote:

I thought that hashtags only "work" if they are applied to the first
post of a topic.  Wouldn't this mean that you would have to turn beta
into a moderated group, so that you can add hashtags before the messages
go out?  Or are you (and moderators in general) able to add hashtags to
posts after they've been posted?

http://davesergeant.com

On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 01:03 PM, Samuel Murray wrote:

I thought that hashtags only "work" if they are applied to the first post of a topic.  Wouldn't this mean that you would have to turn beta into a moderated group, so that you can add hashtags before the messages go out?

Members can add hashtags when they start a topic. However, at present the library of hashtags is (IMHO) a complete mess that is badly in need of rationalisation; if you don't believe me go and look at it.

I am working towards putting a semi - finite proposal to Mark, probably within the next day or two. As it will be proposed via beta I daresay it might trigger one or two howls of protest but that's a risk I am prepared to take.

Watch this space... although I might make it a new topic.

Chris