People seemed to respond favourably to my suggestion to add comment replies and notifications. If these were implemented, it would raise its feasibility as a brainstorming site to reddit's level. Now I'm going to suggest something that would raise it high above reddit.
When I first joined r/minecraftsuggestions, I soon came to realise that it is not the most ideal place to brainstorm: posts can be voted for without giving feedback or contributing to the idea, gaining support for an idea often is a matter of lucky timing and and the bandwagon effect. This can lead to extremely inconsequential changes snowballing in attention and support, while more sensible and potentially worthwhile suggestions for Minecraft drown.
When HelenAngel first become active on the subreddit, I was overjoyed. She has given us a lot of insight into what is suitable for a suggestion, and since she will read any post you tag her in, we can rest assured we don't need to appease hundreds of internet strangers for the idea to be considered!
The increased Mojang staff presence has opened up a window of opportunities. So here's my idea for transforming this site into a true meritocracy.
- When you first submit a suggestion, any old person can vote on it. If the suggestion is bad, they can leave a comment, or report it if it breaks the rules. The more votes a suggestion gets, the more visibility it gets.
- This makes it more likely to be seen by Quality Critiquers (name is a WIP), who have the ability to rate posts. This role can be gained by leaving a lot of quality feedback. To rate a suggestion, they must first leave a comment, and then may rate the suggestion from 1 to 5 stars. These restrictions, I hope, will prevent 1-star ratings from becoming the new downvotes. The rating will be displayed next to the post.
- To increase your post's average rating, you can edit your post according to the feedback you got, which will notify the commenter and prompt them to increase their rating. Suggestions with high ratings can be submitted to the developers, who can give the final word on whether they like the suggestion or not. Since only the best are submitted, this minimises the time and effort developers have to go to, which means they can spend more time adding awesome stuff to the game!
Note: small suggestions that slightly change a feature in no meaningful way should be reported, and ratings restricted. This prevents them from dominating the page, encouraging people to think more creatively.
I believe such changes would truly mark this place as a powerful tool for both players and developers alike. What do you all think?
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All I did was update the topic line and read the entire post here so it'd be easy to tell from the team at a glance if we're talking about the over all minecraft.net site, the bug site, or this one.
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