1wifilibrarian
Create a crowdfunding platform for people to contribute to development of RSIs. For example, a patreon account for LT could enable patrons to vote on RSIs they wish to see progress.
https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/360028159232-Poll-my-patrons
https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/360028159232-Poll-my-patrons
3lilithcat
I've never thought that "voting on RSIs" is particularly helpful.
There have, on occasion, been polls in the forum, and what you see is that they are voted on, first of all, by people who use the forums, which isn't all members by a long shot. And then it's people who use the forum in which the question is mooted, and then further reduced to the people who care.
Additionally, people will vote on an idea often with absolutely no clue as to how much work is involved in making the change. Is it easy, or is it going to involve a lot of code changes? Will the change to one feature necessitate changes elsewhere?
Then, when it can't happen because of the work and complications involved, they get all huffy, even when the situation is explained to them. I've seen this on other sites, too.
There have, on occasion, been polls in the forum, and what you see is that they are voted on, first of all, by people who use the forums, which isn't all members by a long shot. And then it's people who use the forum in which the question is mooted, and then further reduced to the people who care.
Additionally, people will vote on an idea often with absolutely no clue as to how much work is involved in making the change. Is it easy, or is it going to involve a lot of code changes? Will the change to one feature necessitate changes elsewhere?
Then, when it can't happen because of the work and complications involved, they get all huffy, even when the situation is explained to them. I've seen this on other sites, too.
4AndreasJ
I guess crowdfunding could help alleviate the latter concern, in that Tim et consortes could put a price tag on the various ponies - bringing back the salmon might have a lower goal than the orbital laser.
But, yeah, I have a hard time seeing this working in practice.
But, yeah, I have a hard time seeing this working in practice.
5MarthaJeanne
But it still doesn't change the fact that there are two people to do all the coding. Even if you were to bring in a third developer, it would take that person a long time to gain the knowledge of the system needed to start making changes.
6lorax
Even if you were to bring in a third developer, it would take that person a long time to gain the knowledge of the system needed to start making changes.
That depends a lot on what exactly the particular RSI is. "Create an edition layer", yeah. "Show us a list of authors by country rather than just a pie chart of the top five", give them a day or two to learn the DB structure and they can knock that one out easily. I mean, that's neither here nor there to the general topic (which I think is a non-starter), but it's not like a good developer can't come up to speed pretty fast on simple stuff without a deep knowledge of the codebase.
That depends a lot on what exactly the particular RSI is. "Create an edition layer", yeah. "Show us a list of authors by country rather than just a pie chart of the top five", give them a day or two to learn the DB structure and they can knock that one out easily. I mean, that's neither here nor there to the general topic (which I think is a non-starter), but it's not like a good developer can't come up to speed pretty fast on simple stuff without a deep knowledge of the codebase.
