The trouble with the voting plugin is that when you click into really long threads ,the default is to load the last read post, to vote one has to scroll back to the top.
The second issue is that votes are technically for the first comment in the thread, what about ideas that evolve within the thread? This will cause a lot of confusion for the product team as to what exactly users are supporting / backing.
Also from experience, activating the voting plugin is going create a situation where you will be held hostage to ideas regardless of how much you tell the community that nothing is garanteed. Which is difficult to explain out of especially if suggestions don’t fit with the strategic vision or might simply be impossible due to infrustructure, legislation or third party limitations.
From experience on our own community this is a sure fire way to breed resentment for the way you opportunity score ideas and suggestions…
Not sure if you’ve noticed a trend on this forum, but threads can have a tendency to go off on tangents that even mathematicians can’t figure out. Start by saying ‘I want a metal card’ and then be a discussion of if biodegradable cheese cards are a good idea. In that case it’s hard to know from just the votes what people want. Splitting it if it’s spotted early enough is just easier for vote threads
FYI I ran this exact kinda of thing in a previous job, we toyed with Voting but as per others comments, there is a feeling of a need to ‘commit’ to the top voted 1/2 items every [insert timeframe] or people stop bothering.
And sure the threads go off on a tangent, but that’s why business analysts exist, to pull together requirements for the development team to tackle? (HIRE ME!! LOL)
Thought I would link to this previous post I brought up a few months ago, as a result of the comments we have gotten rid of the voting plugin on our discourse community and its helped our product team massively. Don’t make the same mistake we did Monzo. @cookywook
First off, we are no longer held hostage by ideas and submissions posted to our community that receive a large number of votes, sometimes an idea is just not feasible or it doesn’t meet our strategic vision. Users tend to get very passionate when ideas that have fewer votes make it to the roadmap ahead of other ideas. This is often very difficult to justify in an open forum and we are continually having to put out fires all over the community, when users see this happening they often lose faith that we are even listening.
The reality is that you don’t need votes to see when something is in high demand or just makes sense for your product. the idea and the discussion around it is enough and it also doesn’t set an expectation that if you vote we will build.
Good, it’s given us the opportunity to explain how we manage prioritising different requests, along with our business objectives in more depth & the votes are a useful reference point when deciding what to prioritise.
Maybe this helps add a little context… Jobs at Monzo
I’d imagine these Votes COULD be seen as one way that this role would be fulfilling this stated aim
“Plan and ran qualitative studies, including field observations and interviews, remote and in-person usability studies for existing and future products.”
