Dreamwidth Suggestions

Description:
The public suggestion process which DW has inherited from LJ is problematic in several ways, counterproductive to DW's espoused principles and to the aim of getting the best possible suggestions for the betterment of DW.

Right now, the official suggestion-making channel consists of making a public post in a forum of several hundred users under one's actual account name. This has several drawbacks:

1) Because suggestions are not presented "blind" but are presented with the name of the suggester on them, they are subject to a class of bias called a "halo effect", where instead of the idea being evaluated strictly on its merit, it's reception is mediated by what hearers think of the suggester.

The halo effect is an extremely well established and well documented phenomenon in psychology, whereby when individual identities are attached to work to be evaluated, evaluators are biased in terms of whether or not they like the individual suggesting the idea (or the individual's sex, race, etc.) Further, it has been scientifically demonstrated that even being aware of the halo effect does not allow one to compensate for it by cognitive means alone. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect for cites.)

DW has a fine Diversity Statement; well, here's a place the rubber meets the road. For the same reason that symphony orchestras now audition players behind a screen and academic peer review is supposed to be double-blind, DW suggestions should not identify the suggester with the suggestion. It should be possible for a user who has a reputation as, say, an abrasive social justice advocate, to be able to contribute a feature suggestion to DW without it being voted unpopular because its suggester is seen as "uppity" or "shrill".

2) Potential suggesters are constrained to the unions of the set of people comfortable posting in such a public space and the set of people who didn't realize that's what it entails when they filled out the form for the first time. For those of us who think posting in a community of several hundred people is no big deal, it can be hard to remember or respect the perspective of the (many) people for whom that is an extremely daunting proposition. And yet many of those people can be thoughtful, insightful DW users who have interesting and useful thought to contribute. Being willing to engage in the internet version of "public speaking" is not somehow a necessary concomitant to having good ideas about user interfaces or functional design! By having only so public a process, DW strongly deters those people from contributing. And that's largely DW's loss.

Furthermore, I assume this is about to work just like the LJ version does (I've not yet submitted a suggestion at DW, so I'm about to find out), and I will get inundated with email notifications for discussion of this suggestion. That is also a deterrent to submitting suggestions.

I know *I* am deterred, and I'm not what you'd call a fading violet. But I, for one, certainly don't want to receive all umpty-zillion comments on my suggestion or notifications for everyone who votes on it. About nine times of ten that I have a suggestion to make to DW or LJ, I don't make it because I don't want it in my email. I am not kidding or exaggerating. When I *do* make a suggestion, over at LJ, usually I regret it. I really don't need the tsuris. And why should tsuris be the reward for submitting a suggestion?

Furthermore, the handling of suggestions in this way, where the suggester receives an influx of discussion of their merits of their idea (with their name/identity attached to it!) makes me cringe a bit because it pretty badly violates some basic Western-culture etiquette most of us probably learned growing up.

Suggestions are *gifts*. As such, you're not required to *wear* the damn sweater, but you are required to say "Thank you very much" and not tell Aunt Gussy to her face what you think of her fashion sense.

It's funny: I actually have consulted with volunteer organizers on this issue as it crops up face-to-face, which it often does, and which I suspect is why LJ wound up developing a suggestion system which looks just like the problem I help people solve in volunteer organizations.

I'll illustrate with a story: An organizer for a large SCA event, and dear friend, came to me in a tizzy, saying, "Soandso just emailed me suggesting we have Activity X at my event and volunteering to run it. But I don't want Activity X at my event! What do I do?" And I said, "You don't have to accept her suggestion. You don't have to reject her suggestion. You don't owe her an immediate decision on her suggestion. You don't owe her an immediate justification for not instantly capitulating to what you are taking to be her personal wish. You don't actually owe her anything but courtesy. So you say to her, 'Thank you for that suggestion! I'll take it under advisement.'" And his eyes lit up, and he went and told her, "Thank you for that suggestion! I'll take it under advisement." And she was perfectly happy with that and he was happy with that and he no longer felt like every suggestion put him on the spot and he went on to use that all the time, even on me on occasion, and everybody lived happily ever after.

It would be neat if DW's system had that same grace; that it received the suggestion from the suggester, thanking them for it, and letting them know if it was up for discussion, but not opting them in to that discussion automatically. Further, while the aforementioned separation of identity of suggester from suggestion means that the suggester is less likely to interpret the discussion as a referendum on themselves and their worth as a human being (which reduction is good), nevertheless, for someone who is shy or uncertain of themselves, even when not identified as the originator of the idea, being exposed to people dispassionately discussing the merits of one's idea can feel a bit like feeding one's ego into a meat grinder. Obviously, public discussion of the merits of suggestions is a good thing, so it must not be suppressed; but there's no reason that DW couldn't make it possible for the suggester not to be exposed to that part of the process, if they prefer not.

SUGGESTED IMPLEMENTATION:

1) That posts to dw_suggestions be "anonymous" in that they don't reveal who proposed them, and

2) The suggester is presented with a ticky box to opt into receiving email notification of comments on their post (i.e. turning tracking on) rather than that happening automagically.