[wp-hackers] Ideas Forum (Voting)

[Lloyd Budd]

On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 12:36 PM, Mike Schinkel
<mikeschinkel at newclarity.net> wrote:
Subject was: Re: [wp-hackers] Improving WordPress Core Development
> On Dec 29, 2009, at 3:18 PM, Mike Schinkel wrote:
>> On Dec 29, 2009, at 3:12 PM, Matt Mullenweg wrote:
>>> On 2009-12-29 11:52 AM, Mike Schinkel wrote:
>>>> Anyway, that doesn't work nearly as well as UserVoice.
>>>
>>> We can make the ideas forum better, and will. I prefer that over a dependency on an external, proprietary service.
>>
>> Why must you reinvent the wheel when one already exists? Why work on something that you'll but 10% of your time into when someone else will be putting 100% of their time into? Why force us to wait on improvements until some unforeseen time in the future when those improvements could be had now?
>>
>> The "Not Invented Here" syndrome has seen the downfall of many a powerful company. Why not learn from their experience?
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here

Hi Mike,

Your message comes across to me as aggressive and accusatory. Saying
"respectively so" does not make it respectively so. Possibly, I'm
misreading your missives.


> Let me add to this:
>
> -- A lot more people are becoming familiar with how User Voice works than will ever be familiar with how WordPress' Ideas work. There is significant benefit to leveraging that which more people are familiar with[1].

Currently, I think User Voice is a great tool for open source projects
getting started. Established ones should always try to reach for open
source solutions.

What do you feel is special/innovative about the user voice
experience? In my experience it seems consistent with already
established patterns.

I don't think it would take much work to make
http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/ fit the bill. I don't see WordPress
member value for not making the small investment in an open source
solution.


> -- If you ever find that your dependence on an external, proprietary service you can always revert to what you had before, and the benefits can rack up in the interim.

That's quite the pitch. Revert to what you had before and lose
everything from the interim.

Although, you can often export your data from proprietary systems, not
always. You also almost always lose the meta data, and are crippled if
you want to look for deeper insights, patterns, or need to do
administration specific to your members or scale of use.



> -- The (web) world is evolving to where people depend more and more on external proprietary services, i.e. [2]. Making decisions as if that were not happening is, respectfully speaking, not embracing the evolution of the web.

That's not evolution, that is the status quo. It's a direct
continuation of computing history which has largely been proprietary.


If there are other open source solutions out there that might be a
good fit, let's evaluate them as well.


Best regards,
Lloyd