Dedicated Sub-Forums for SM Feature Requests/Bugs

darryl

Hi all:

I know Andy has established a "system" for gathering and archiving Feature Requests and Bugs, moving posts that fit those categories into the sticky thread at the top of the page.

I appreciate having Feature Requests and Bugs all in one place, but I have to say, it is very difficult to have them in the same thread. You end up with the discussion about a particular FR or Bug split across the thread, and it becomes very difficult to follow.

I'm just suggesting that maybe you could have the best of both worlds -- keeping all the FRs and Bugs in their own space, but still preserving separate threads for each one.

Thanks for reading!

--Darryl

Andy

darryl wrote:

Hi all:

I know Andy has established a "system" for gathering and archiving Feature Requests and Bugs, moving posts that fit those categories into the sticky thread at the top of the page.

I appreciate having Feature Requests and Bugs all in one place, but I have to say, it is very difficult to have them in the same thread. You end up with the discussion about a particular FR or Bug split across the thread, and it becomes very difficult to follow.

I'm just suggesting that maybe you could have the best of both worlds -- keeping all the FRs and Bugs in their own space, but still preserving separate threads for each one.

Thanks for reading!

--Darryl

Thanks for the 2nd post on this subject. I appreciate it.

Please think about how important it is for us to have your FRs in one place. When I see them, I move them to the dedicated sticky Feature Request thread. About once every two months or so, we start a new thread, archive and cross link the old ones, and report on what's been asked, and what's been done.

Thanks again Darryl.

darryl

Sure. It was just a suggestion that I thought would satisfy both needs. I guess you can't easily archive a sub-forum though, huh?

And I'm not just thinking of us. I am thinking about you. :-}

I would think that dedicated Sub-Forums (w/ separate threads for each FR/Bug) would help you guys, because for every Feature Request or Bug, there is probably a fair amount of discussion (clarification, validation, suggestions, workarounds) that goes on for each one.

It is probably hard for you guys to follow the discussion of a particular FR or Bug as it gets scattered throughout a single thread. When one of my FR or Bugs gets posted to that thread, I end up having to read every single post thereafter to see if anybody commented on it.

It would be easy to miss a follow-up post for a particular FR or Bug as it got lost in the "flood" of follow-ups for other FRs/Bugs.

But yeah, archiving would be a pain if vBulletin doesn't allow for sub-sub-forums.

darryl

I googled for vBulletin sub-sub-forums and voila:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=19

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

I know SmugMug worries about the usability of N-Levels for photos, but I think this is one place where N-Levels would make a lot of sense.

darryl

Andy wrote:

Please think about how important it is for us to have your FRs in one place. When I see them, I move them to the dedicated sticky Feature Request thread. About once every two months or so, we start a new thread, archive and cross link the old ones, and report on what's been asked, and what's been done.

Hi Andy -- I know I'm dragging this up for a 3rd time, but...

Please look at the vBulletin 2 Bugs page

See how each sub-sub-forum is broken out by version? Instead of SmugMug Bugs Thread #1-#20, you could have sub-sub-forums named like "SmugMug Bugs 2009.01.01-2009.02.28". And you could simply copy new Bugs into that folder. When February's over, you could close that folder and start a new one.

For you, it seems like the effort would be the same. But for *everyone*, it seems like it would be much easier to search for a specific Bug/FR (and most importantly, the follow-up discussion between customers and SmugMuggers) if they were all separate threads.

Also, I think it would be much easier for your developers if in your bug-tracking system you could link to a single discrete thread re: a bug or feature request as opposed to a specific post in a particular thread. Right now, any/all follow-up discussion for a bug/FR ends up strewn across that month's Bug/FR thread, and must be a real hassle for a developer to follow.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Andy

darryl wrote:

and must be a real hassle for a developer to follow.

None of our sorcerers are complaining of any difficulty in following any bug discussions. Sorry

darryl wrote:

Do you see what I'm saying?

Thanks Darryl, yes I see. And thank you for posting this. I'll make sure the team sees this, too.