MODX 3 - New Feature Request System

Hi,

I have one other suggestion: YouTrack from JetBrains

They offers cloud and stand-alone version. For opensource projects they offer free licence.

Some pros:
- Voting system
- UI
- Keyboard controll
- Search bar
- GitHub integration (for every project)
- Highly customizable
- All addons and MODx stuff could be tracked in one place

Some cons:
- Registration is needed for registration
- First settings for projects could take a while

An interesting clarification on my earlier rant: the Github markdown is borked only for the Wiki! If you post MODX tags in the bug-tracker, it formats correctly, e.g.

https://github.com/craftsmancoding/gmarker/issues/10

But the wiki mangles it... which concerns me greatly. I'd rather have crappy code with excellent documentation than great code with bad docs. Sad, but that's a hard truth for coding in the real world.

If you convert the square brackets to HTML entities should be ok in the Wiki. Really no different than what you have todo in MODX (when blogging in MODX and showing tags) but still looking for an easier method.

I think the problem might be needing a user interface for requesting features that is dead simple and easy to use and needing a backend that allows for viewing those requests and tracking them like Github or Redmine.

If the idea is to get more people involved with feature suggestions we need to remove barriers. Github, Redmine, etc are barriers to most users. I would say most of the people who use the more popular CMS have no knowledge of these tools and don't care to and don't have the time to.

Something like http://www.uservoice.com or http://wordpress.org/ideas/ are quicker and easier to submit ideas to. Instead of trying to convince users to jump through hoops just for feature requests.

http://www.uservoice.com or http://wordpress.org/ideas/ are fine for soliciting general feedback/ideas, but someone would need to read through the submissions and enter them into a real tracking/ticketing system. Not having a bug-tracker is a real barrier to developers. So having a general feedback mechanism is a good idea, but it must eventually feed into a bug-tracker. The good stuff from http://wordpress.org/ideas/ eventually ends up as feature requests inside of their Trac bug-tracker. No reason MODX couldn't do something similar.

I've actually come full circle on user suggested ideas, however, I think third party tools are not the answer. I really like the wordpress.org/ideas thread with voting and etc.

The one thing that none of these tools can do is turn all the discussion into a well defined feature and scope to turn into a ticket. Ideas makers should not be obliged to understand how to make it happen and the effort involved. That's for developers current and potential to help suss out.

I still have my concerns of unpopular ideas making people feel invalidated or great but unpopular ideas getting lost but I think the benefits outweigh the concerns and I think we can help make people feel like their contributions are valuable even if not incorporated.

It might be nice if there was a way for core developers to respond to ideas, for example to ask for clarification, explain why something couldn't be done in the current architecture, or explain why it was a whole lot more difficult than it seemed.