Future Features?

December 29, 2006 10:30 PM

I love the features you've added (like the new ajax favorites...)
General Request: Matt, can we get a list of your plans of what features you're aiming to implement? Can we (the general mefi population) have input (vote) on the features we want?
posted by filmgeek to Feature Requests at 10:30 PM (45 comments total)

WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.
FILMGEEK?
posted by cgc373 at 10:33 PM on December 29, 2006

No. Sit and spin.
posted by bob sarabia at 10:46 PM on December 29, 2006

Shut the hell up and let filmgeek speak. Jesus Gill Scott Heron Christ!
posted by Jimbob at 10:53 PM on December 29, 2006

The new favorite thing is pretty neat. Is that something that would be possible to add to flags?
posted by danb at 10:58 PM on December 29, 2006

Jabber Server?!
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 11:02 PM on December 29, 2006

A Jabber server would be neat.
posted by Lafe at 11:04 PM on December 29, 2006

Jabber.
posted by Jimbob at 11:12 PM on December 29, 2006

You can talk all you want about features you'd like to see, metatalk is filled with requests (including a category for the very thing).

As always, I note what people ask for, and compare that against what I can do easily and what would make an improvement to the site. If I wanted consensus, I'd throw it to a vote, but I can't really think of any past features that needed such a procedure.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:32 PM on December 29, 2006

If I remember correctly, the jabber server was something of an experiment. It ended up causing a lot of problems and isn't coming back. Frankly, I'm surprised anyone is requesting its return.
posted by bob sarabia at 11:57 PM on December 29, 2006

danb: The new favorite thing is pretty neat. Is that something that would be possible to add to flags?
mathowie: Lemme know if you hit any snags and please hold off on "but, but, can you also make it do x?" requests until we're sure it works in most all browsers.

Jeebus. Patience.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:04 AM on December 30, 2006

Jabber.
posted by FieldingGoodney at 4:38 AM on December 30, 2006

The Hut!
posted by FieldingGoodney at 4:40 AM on December 30, 2006

silc? irc.metafilter.com? jabber?
posted by arimathea at 5:52 AM on December 30, 2006

A hell of a long time ago, Matt had a tadalist for MeFi enhancements. I subscribed to the RSS feed, and I think I saw him finish one or two things. It was thrilling, but like all to-do lists, it was ignored in lieu of actually working on the things.
posted by Plutor at 6:04 AM on December 30, 2006

An API would be cool. I'd like to make a tag/post browser based on my design for the MeFi compilation CD cover. There was a discussion at some point and I think Matt said there was a possibility of a data dump he could produce in lieu of a full open API... Matt, is there any chance of a file like that?
posted by shortfuse at 8:04 AM on December 30, 2006

Oops, I found the thread on opening up MeFi and it was cortext who suggested a data dump and not Matt mentioning it. My bad.
posted by shortfuse at 8:08 AM on December 30, 2006

cortex
posted by shortfuse at 8:09 AM on December 30, 2006

I HAVE A CORE. IN MY TEX.
posted by quonsar at 8:15 AM on December 30, 2006

a possibility of a data dump he could produce

oh god yes

it was cortext who suggested a data dump and not Matt

but don't tell Matt that!

I HAVE A CORE. IN MY TEX.

don't tell me no lies and keep your hands to yourself
posted by cortex at 8:49 AM on December 30, 2006

As well as a data dump, delmoi suggested some kind of XML format for Metafilter in that thread.

<pants owner="quonsar"><fish /></pants>
posted by matthewr at 9:43 AM on December 30, 2006

its "sit and swivel".
i think.
posted by phaedon at 10:39 AM on December 30, 2006

I know Matt won't keep a public to-do list because people would hold him to his estimate and nag him about being overdue on upgrades to his own site. But so help me, I dreamt last night that MetaFilter had a changelog so that we could keep track of changes to the site without sifting through old MetaTalk posts. And it was nice, and good, and RSS-subscribable for those OCD enough to want such a thing. And then I heard quonsar laughing in my head, "It'll NEVER happen!" and I woke up. There was no cold sweat, but I had to shit for about an hour. That probably had to do with something I ate, though, and not the dream.

So the moral of the story is we need a changelog. And some pepto.
posted by Eideteker at 2:46 PM on December 30, 2006

What you mean, "we," Pink-Chalky-Indigestion-Face?
posted by cgc373 at 3:41 PM on December 30, 2006

Voting is no way to guide the development of a website.

And no one ever requested some of the best features here, like Music and AskMe. They were solely Matt's brainchildren.

Letting people vote, or even just telling them what you plan to do, sets up expectations that may or may not be met in the complex and uncertain process of rolling out new features in a stable, scalable, maintainable way.

If Matt had announced AJAX favorites before it went out, there would have been a huge flurry of "while you're at it, make it do XYZ" or "it would be easy to add ABC." Chances are any timetable for rolling it out would have been difficult to hit, due to bugs, possible performance considerations, testing, etc.

So what you would have gotten would have been a stripped-down version of what everyone "agreed" would be a killer feature. And probably late.

No, no. Matt's the product manager (and head of engineering) around here, and as he says, input matters but democratizing the development of the site is not a great idea.
posted by scarabic at 4:20 PM on December 30, 2006

And no one ever requested some of the best features here, like Music and AskMe. They were solely Matt's brainchildren.

That's actually not true. Ask metafilter at the very least was requested my members and in fact was put together in some form (as a second site, or email list, or something, I forget) before matt decided to implement it here.
posted by justgary at 4:38 PM on December 30, 2006

And I requested the holy hell out of Music. Matt is probably still annoyed at me.
posted by cortex at 4:45 PM on December 30, 2006

What scarabic said. I used to announce stuff I was thinking about all the time, but it ended up disappointing everyone when I'd be late or it'd not meet everyone's expectations.

Ask quonsar about how well I do on meeting deadlines.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:05 PM on December 30, 2006

I'm bored enough tonight that I actually dug up the original thread with the user suggestion for AskMe.
posted by Mid at 5:06 PM on December 30, 2006

A changelog or "new features log" wouldn't be a bad idea... but would the log need to be the first item on itself?

Kind of like:
Todo List
(1) Make todo list

...but at the other end. Or something.
posted by wendell at 5:11 PM on December 30, 2006

I'm bored enough tonight that I actually dug up the original thread with the user suggestion for AskMe.

Thanks, I was looking for that and couldn't find it.
posted by justgary at 5:12 PM on December 30, 2006

I'm glad mathowie doesn't trust us to think up the ideas. I'm totally uncreative in that regard.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:19 PM on December 30, 2006 [1 favorite]

All you need is a screaming two-month old to keep you shut in and you can spend hours searching the site!
posted by Mid at 5:57 PM on December 30, 2006 [1 favorite]

why do people keep asking for a jabber server? i used the mefi jabber server when it was last up, and do you know who else was on there?

fucking no one.

just put your aim handles in your profiles, people. i swear to god, this is like when some dude tells everyone he knows that for christmas, he really wants to get into fine wine or cognac or some shit, so everyone gets him cognac and fine wine and then he sees all the bottles and realizes that he's already over that phase and he regifts them all at other holidays.
posted by shmegegge at 6:14 PM on December 30, 2006

If this site was designed by common consent, we wouldn't have the best site... we'd have the site we deserve, and that, my friends, is a terrifying thought.

This thread would be useless with images.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:44 PM on December 30, 2006

shmegegge, I have to disagree with you on this.

I used the jabber server quite a bit when it was available.

For me, it was an opt-in way of seeing who was interested in talking (vs. my IM account. I rarely IM anyone on Mefi because I haven't been invited to.)

It caused problems....and was abandoned. To me - a set of features shouldn't be abandoned just because it's difficult.

The way software design happens (or is purported to happen) is the development is a combination of ease of implementation and 'sexiness' of a feature.

I miss an official IRC...in other words a real time way to interact with other MeFi users. Tapes (and bunnies) aren't sanctions (and are both dying.)
posted by filmgeek at 7:57 PM on December 30, 2006 [1 favorite]

isn't there a #metachat that's still all the rage?

i don't know for certain because i don't engage in much irc anymore.
posted by shmegegge at 10:18 PM on December 30, 2006

or rather #meta. damn
posted by shmegegge at 10:18 PM on December 30, 2006

#metachat is all the rage if you don't mind meeting a schedule and turning up in the channel when and only when you're told to. No lurking allowed! And you have to be nice. Kinda defeats the purpose of IRC.
posted by Jimbob at 12:39 AM on December 31, 2006

irc://irc.ieattapes.com is always open and welcoming of new people!
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 12:44 AM on December 31, 2006

irc://irc.ieattapes.com/#tapes, rather
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 12:46 AM on December 31, 2006

filmgeek: jiminy crickets, what do you want for five bucks? I think change should be driven by what makes more of a community, not what's on some project plan you can play movie critic to.
posted by nj_subgenius at 11:34 AM on December 31, 2006

well, what about something like what the folks at upcoming.org had (before they got bought by Yahoo) - a development wiki under the section marked "Feedback and Announcements"? There you can have the Official To-Do List and Feature Requests and whatnot. It might help Matt keep track of things, development wise, and if people want to bitch about what's not being done, well, they can bitch on the feature request page all they want ;) You don't even have to put actual dates on the to-do list items - it's more like 'here's what's coming up'.

And where's this idea that software design/development is a combination of ease of implementation and 'sexiness' of a feature? Gah, silly silly person. It's about finding out what your users need to do (and how dev can easily create the solution) and solving the problem - sexiness has nothing to do with it. < / rant mode off>
posted by rmm at 12:13 PM on December 31, 2006

oops, my bad - I forgot that we have a wiki here. If there's a way we can reorganize it to make it like the Upcoming one it might help things - I can do a bit of that reorganization if necessary.
posted by rmm at 12:16 PM on December 31, 2006

I guess given the presence of a wiki we could keep a changelog ourselves, by just sorting through metatalk. I certainly don't care enough to do it myself (ha ha!), I'm just sayin...
posted by aubilenon at 1:04 PM on December 31, 2006

If I wanted consensus, I'd throw it to a vote ...
Just the thought of that sent a cold shiver down my spine.
posted by dg at 2:39 PM on January 1, 2007