There was no community discussion, no, for two reasons: one, it was before we had a community, and two, certain anti-abuse and site management decisions do get made without discussion, either because a decision needs to be made quickly or because providing enough information for uninvolved people to make an educated decision would reveal information detrimental to the service. (I love you guys and I love community discussion, because many brains working in concert are better than a few of us making decisions, but we don't publicise all of our anti-abuse tools and we never will.)
When the gatekeeper sweeps the prospect of change under the carpet, nothing can get better.
Yes, but conversely, if I can see no argument being advanced that would make us change our policy, allowing it through for discussion would be irresponsible (and frustrating) of me. For instance, I generally reject suggestions involving "make this particular feature that's a heavy motivator for people to buy paid accounts available to free accounts" (the recent discussion re: expanding comments is an exception, since I was of two minds about it), or suggestions involving giving free accounts more icon slots, because of course people are going to want to get more features on a free account, but doing so would be detrimental to the service. There are times when the effort necessary to get everybody up to speed to make intelligent decisions wouldn't be worth the time it took, or situations where the motivation for the individual conflicts with the motivation for the service as a whole, when I just don't think that discussion would go anywhere useful.
(It's fairly rare. Most of what gets bounced out of the suggestions queue are duplicates of existing suggestions or things we already have bugs open for. But there are times when I bounce stuff because i just don't see discussion going anywhere useful.)
no subject
When the gatekeeper sweeps the prospect of change under the carpet, nothing can get better.
Yes, but conversely, if I can see no argument being advanced that would make us change our policy, allowing it through for discussion would be irresponsible (and frustrating) of me. For instance, I generally reject suggestions involving "make this particular feature that's a heavy motivator for people to buy paid accounts available to free accounts" (the recent discussion re: expanding comments is an exception, since I was of two minds about it), or suggestions involving giving free accounts more icon slots, because of course people are going to want to get more features on a free account, but doing so would be detrimental to the service. There are times when the effort necessary to get everybody up to speed to make intelligent decisions wouldn't be worth the time it took, or situations where the motivation for the individual conflicts with the motivation for the service as a whole, when I just don't think that discussion would go anywhere useful.
(It's fairly rare. Most of what gets bounced out of the suggestions queue are duplicates of existing suggestions or things we already have bugs open for. But there are times when I bounce stuff because i just don't see discussion going anywhere useful.)