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Hi all, i have an idea to improve
drasticaly brainstorm efficiency, because this
is a great tool to represent kde community will.
and in my opinion, the idea submiting system
has to be modified.

The problem : some ideas are really good and can
definetly make KDE a greater thing. The brainstorm
is flooded by many many ideas because people
wants to participate to this common project. then
the "old" good ideas are forgotten and members
can't easily vote for them. these ideas remained
unsubmited. even the new good ideas will be
forgotten replaced by the new ones.

why not organizing vote campaigns : i mean select 10 or more ideas,
create a banner with selected ideas and button to enable quick voting (using ajax for instance)
each week and send an email to each member with the
"selection of thel week".

we have to encourage people to vote.

at the end of the week, in function of positive vote number
(or per centage) the ideas are submited to developpers

IT'S NOT A BUMPING ATTEMPT TO GET MY IDEAS
SUBMITED

please tell me what you think about it, express yourself
and vote.

Mockups here :

Have a look here : brainstorm.php?mode=idea&i=94727

Well, I would like to know what is the voting rate what is need to be so the idea is submitted to bugs.kde.org with the special "tag" so it will be added to official KDE SC. As some ideas are submitted when there are just under 10 votes (even total) and some are over 100 and still nothing. Lots of submitted ideas between those and it just makes wonder, how much there should be votes to get something?

Who decides what and when idea gets submitted to BKO?

If I remember correctly, the idea was that when there is enough votes, the idea gets in the BKO where it gets special tag "community wants" and it gets priority over other ideas there.

And really there are many ideas in here but it is hard to keep list of them as the list changes all the time when someone adds a comment.

Well, for now the whole submitting process is done by hand. So we start with the highest vote number. And we just add a link to it.
And I don't know for many of the low vote number ideas, but some were submitted to BKO by their proponents or someone who really wanted the idea to be implicated.
But that kind of destroys the point of Brainstorm section. And is, or should be at least, frowned upon.

Mockup available, don't hesitate to post comments, and any ideas to improve the concept

I have just gone trough some of the ideas what are added here and then what are submitted. There seems not to be a logic what idea actually get delivered for developers and what not.
More like if developer or someone likes the idea, then it gets in.

OK so how can I catch devs attention to get my idea submitted ?

"There seems not to be a logic what idea actually get delivered for developers and what not.
More like if developer or someone likes the idea, then it gets in."

Why would it be anything else? I'm a developer, and I have twice implemented something on KDE brainstorm because it seemed like a good idea.

A lot of the ideas will take up nearly a month of a developer's free time, possibly even more - I'd do it because _I_ thought it was a good idea, not because N people voted for it.

I'm going a bit off topic but the next question:
"OK so how can I catch devs attention to get my idea submitted ?"

I'm not familiar with your ideas, but generally most the ideas on here have been utter ****. Here's my advice list on what makes a good idea.

- mockups. (like the original poster here). you need to show that you've put in a lot of effort if you're going to ask someone else to put in a tonne of effort too - and ideally show that you'd be willing to help test and develop the idea.

- realism. Almost every sensible idea on here, within two posts gets expanded into something completely OTT.

- small steps. If you have an idea that completely redesigns KDE, it simply won't happen. Keep things small, keep things simple. There was a really good mockup for Kmail on here once, however it changed absolutely _everything_ and made up so many custom widgets. No-one's going to implement all that. It would take forever, and it so radical you could never get it merged. Had it been written as "make the folder selection do this", "make the mail list look like this" it might have gotten somewhere.

- Research. If you're suggesting an improvement to dolphin, make sure you know it 100% inside out. Check if your idea exists, if there's anything on kde-apps.org that already does it. Do any other applications do it?

- Spend some time thinking about it, not every idea I have is very good. In fact I come up with a lot of ****, that I later decide is a stupid idea. I imagine everyone else is the same.

- Don't get technical. Don't say how to implement it, unless you genuinely understand how to do it.

- Last but not least, don't insult the devs. (It genuinely happens in a lot of these ideas), I personally simply stop reading at that point.

---

If you're convinced you have a really good idea, don't just use this site get on the relevant mailing list and show us. I'm on the KDE Telepathy team (a new upcoming IM client) if someone had been following our developments, and was a regular tester then submitted a really really good idea to improve a small aspect, I'd be all for it.

david_edmundson wrote:"There seems not to be a logic what idea actually get delivered for developers and what not.
More like if developer or someone likes the idea, then it gets in."

Why would it be anything else? I'm a developer, and I have twice implemented something on KDE brainstorm because it seemed like a good idea.

A lot of the ideas will take up nearly a month of a developer's free time, possibly even more - I'd do it because _I_ thought it was a good idea, not because N people voted for it.

So simply saying, brainstorm section in forum.kde.org has no purpose / voting has no purpose?

As far I remember, the original idea of the brainstorm section with voting was that the community can submit ideas what they need/like and then community votes and discus about it and if the idea gets enough votes, it will be sended to BKO with special tag "Community wants/needs".

Yes, it is open source, mainly a community work by giving own free time for it. But somewhere it should start to give inspiration for people. Someone to think "Hey, I could do that what people really like and needs even that I dont like need/like it".

It is always easy to be excelent coder and say "Hey, it is not so hard to learn code and write that feature by yourself". Even if for normal user to learn coding is as huge as designing a space shuttle and flying around the moon.
Being part of the community is that if you are somewhere good, you help others, not just by saying "learn to do it yourself". As all can not be brain surgeons, car mechanics, software engineers, architects or handymans when needed. We need each others. And in good community, helping others is not done because it helps the one who helps or who helps just thinks it is good thing do now when it feels so.

- mockups. (like the original poster here). you need to show that you've put in a lot of effort if you're going to ask someone else to put in a tonne of effort too - and ideally show that you'd be willing to help test and develop the idea.

And I tought the mockups idea is to visually explain to other community members and developers the idea what it is. Not just writing. The person who sends the idea, can not be responsible to be the key element for development but it should be done among developers and usability experts and artists.

- realism. Almost every sensible idea on here, within two posts gets expanded into something completely OTT.

Some people calls that discussion and throwing up ideas together. Isn't that idea as well in community? Someone gets idea, tells it to others and then it is discussed together?
So far I have not seen offtopic discussions, but it seems more about the limitation what is "Off-topic". As some people calls off-topic everything what is not directly just the one thing. (Example, if person gives idea A could be red, then offtopic is if someone says it would be better if it would be a blue by reasoning X).

So next time when I see a brainstorm what is about software feature X and it turns after two post about farming carrots... I know it is offtopic.

- small steps. If you have an idea that completely redesigns KDE, it simply won't happen. Keep things small, keep things simple.

Simply putting: "Dont tell any ideas what are not small and what does show that all the work what is already done could be done better with other way"

One of the problems with developers is that they do not see forrest from the trees. Developers starts just tweaking the one small thing what itch them, forgetting that there is huge usability problem what affects all the times everyone.
The "small steps" is important in development, that you take problem, you brake it to small pieces and then you solve every problem step by step and then you get the whole problem solved. But to get even that beginning, we need to bring up the whole problem. The big problem. Throw up big ideas and goals. Then develop technics etc to get there.
brainstorm.php?mode=idea&i=94650#anchormain

- Spend some time thinking about it, not every idea I have is very good. In fact I come up with a lot of ****, that I later decide is a stupid idea. I imagine everyone else is the same.

So only great and 100% workable ideas should be brought up?
There is simply no many ideas what can not be used again in somewhere else. Someone gets idea for application X but no one likes. Then some other person has a problem and remembers later the someone else idea for X what did not work but it solves problem on application Y.

Yes, there are some stupid ideas what can be very naive like "Lets make it so that pressing ESC shutdowns the computer". But someone might get the idea to use ESC for little similar thing, like "Lets make ESC to close the window".

- Don't get technical. Don't say how to implement it, unless you genuinely understand how to do it.

And what would be "technical" in this case? Telling what technologies should interact with each other? Like that feature X for Dolphin should use Nepomuk to pull data from addressbook?
I have not yet seen than very few (in small ways) brainstorms here what are technical (code).

If you're convinced you have a really good idea, don't just use this site get on the relevant mailing list and show us.

One of the ideas for this forum was that not everyone use or follow mailinglists. Developers like to sit on mailinglists and IRC. But todays users use web forums (I am "hardcode" mailinglist and newsgroup user myself) and blogs.

Currently it just feels that this brainstrom section is not so much respected by KDE (in this case developers).
Like it is wanted again to push all the development to IRC and mailinglists. Somewhere "dark" where normal people does not see it or does not want to come. Yes, it is open, it is public but it is leveraged just enough to keep it among small group of people.

And then if the discussion goes around the project mailinglist of the idea what was started here, there is separated group of people here who does not see what is happening.

As far I now have understanded, is that this section of forum is to courage people to post ideas, even the grazy and radical (evolutional or revolutional).
Discuss about it among community.

If community likes it votes acording that. And when the brainstorm gets enough votes what means (community wants).
Then it is posted with special tag to BKO and brainstorm topic is locked and directed discussion to BKO where developers can discus even more it how to bring it in.

But now, ideas does not get attention after a while, they get pushed somewhere deep, even if they would have lots of votes.
Those who does not follow daily the site, does not find all the ideas. It is harder to go around just clicking tags.

I come here to check what people invents and how they use the software. Just to find out "Okay, that person thinks that way from this software and would need something like that".
And those small ideas are priceless and they can turn to be massively effecting for every computer user in someone else's mind.

I really would like to see more comments in brainstorm forum. More ideas and easier browsing for them. Get the community work more together instead discussion going on different mailing lists, different distributors IRC chats and so on "hidden" from the normal users.

I think we should get the basic users being in touch with the developers (that is something what was done for Help > menu in KDE apps) by giving them ideas what other users likes and what they need and then give that for developers as a hint and ideas to use and play with. If there is single (or few) person who decises what gets sended to BKO or what is worth of developing and what not, if not stating why so, then the open source community does not work correctly.

david_edmundson wrote:
- small steps. If you have an idea that completely redesigns KDE, it simply won't happen. Keep things small, keep things simple. There was a really good mockup for Kmail on here once, however it changed absolutely _everything_ and made up so many custom widgets. No-one's going to implement all that. It would take forever, and it so radical you could never get it merged. Had it been written as "make the folder selection do this", "make the mail list look like this" it might have gotten somewhere.

Are you talking about brainstorm.php#idea43973_page1 If so, its great to see that someone remembers a post over 2 years old

From what I member from those days,

1) There is NO wireframing tool for KDE. It means the mockup has to be drawn by hand (try http://www.lucidchart.com > Demo > Manage library > check iPhone), and doing even 90% reimplementation is damn hard job. Some elements, that looks line totally new widgets, just looks so only because it saved me more than a few days of work (it also was one of the first mockups for me).

2) There was/is NO clear path how ideas gets implemented. Having in mind posted/implemented ideas ratio it was/is naive to expect it to happen, so doing one big, but brief, suggestion was the most sensible way for me to juts expect devs will ever read them, and might be a few years later it will get done.

Until there wont be CLEAR a to z - idea to the final result - ecosystem developed, I, personally, don't believe the brainstorm, as it is now, will ever bring any measurable good