It's That Time Again! The 2002 RPG Enhancement Poll

 >>  I just think if you really want know what we want most, it would make
more since to have us rank the items and you apply your weighting those
results.

Seth, and others who have raised similar issues.

Since I was involved in the first use of this technique in Toronto (first to
my knowledge anyway - we used it first on COBOL) I thought I'd throw in my 5
cents.

The method you describe is the one that was used for years within the
Toronto development process.  The reason it was changed to the "Shopping
List" approach was that frankly it didn't work.  It was common for the items
that came to the top of the list to exceed the development capacity for the
release.  Often there was no clear "winner" and (since you couldn't do more
development than you had the $ for) there was no way to determine which
feature was the most valuable to the greatest number of people.  The
Shopping List changed that because it forces people to recognize that there
is a cost to things and that they need to balance need and resource.  You
get a much clearer prioritization which also helps in the event that
something turns out to be cheaper than expected (free-form is probably a
good example) or when resource is cut and you need to decide what drops out
of plan.

If I were George and Co, there is one change I think I would experiment
with.  That is to have everyone vote twice.  Once with their personal
choices, and a second vote for those features that they think would be the
most benefit to the RPG community at large.  The differences in weighting
could be both informative and useful.  One reason for this is that I think
currently people vote differently.  Personally I always try to vote based on
my view of the community benefit - not my own favorites.  Why?  Because I
might tend to vote for (for example) full null support.  However, frankly I
believe this would be a waste of development $s.  Only a fraction of the RPG
community even use embedded SQL.  In that group only a tiny percentage know
about, let alone use, null support.  The current support may not be perfect,
but it is usable - and yet it is hardly used.  IMO upping the support level
would have minimal impact to the usage level and therefore to the community
as a whole.  As indicated by some postings to this list, some have voted for
this support - would they have voted that way for the community benefit?

Jon Paris
Partner400