Idea Exchange "Idea Declined for lack of measurable Kudo rate" policy needs to be amended

[X.]

I hope I am not the only one to be irked by the apparently unilateral decision of NI to automatically (actually not quite) decline Ideas posted in the Idea Exchange forums if they haven't received at least N kudos after N years (I am actually familiar with the LabVIEW IE forum, but I suppose that the same holds for others).

While I can understand the underlying reasoning ("Lithium is charging us $100 a year per Idea Posted, but we get one Idea-year credit each time one is acted upon, so let's get rid of those forgotten ideas"), I think there is one logical step that was missed in the process.

That is, ask the question: why were these ideas forgotten?

Well, who would have guessed? Because they have slipped into the stack of 265 pages of 20 ideas each in which they are stored (at least in the layout I have chosen).

Considering that declining an idea is actually not an automatic process, since a NI employee has to manually close the thread, I would suggest the following, which could be done automatically by Lithium:

When an idea is approaching its "expiration date", bring it back to the attention of users, for a last close look at it.

Some indeed may have little general value, but some might actually be of interest, or could suggest other ideas.

A simple way to do this would be to provide a 1 month "grace period" for those posts, which would be listed in a new tab in the landing page for the LabVIEW IE forum. Say, a "Soon to be Declined" tab, next to the "Hot Ideas", "Top Kudoed Ideas" and "Most Recent Ideas".

[Nathan_B.]

I like this idea.  Things of good value sometimes do get forggoten in the mix.

[altenbach]

Yes, they are trying to solve a problem (=cleaning out the idea exchange by getting rid of all the noise) by potentially eliminating good ideas that nobody ever noticed.

There are many reasons an idea does not receive any kudos:

1. The idea is bad.
2. The idea is presented in a way that is hard to understand.
3. The idea is excellent, but nobody noticed it.
4. ...

Long ago, we were trying to address point #3 with this thread. It is still open, so anyone can post their pet idea to nudge it into the spotlight. 😉

If an idea has numerous comments by the regulars explaining why the idea is bad, there is no need to prolong the agony and it should be declined without further quetions..

If an idea has reached it's expiration date, the decliner (typically a very knowlegable NI employee!!!) should take one last look at it to see if there is any meat left. If there is any doubt that the idea is actually very (very!) good and fits #3, it should be extended and maybe the originator notified. I seriously doubt that this is the case very often.

Of course if a good idea expires without kudos, we need to understand that something was wrong with it. Maybe it was the presentation style. For example, an idea that is mostly complaning about something is less likely to receive kudos than an idea that provides constructive content .

At this point the OP could decide to write a new idea, carrying some of the old content, but expanding it in much more details:

• An introductory paragraphs explaining why the idea is needed and what the current workarounds are.
• A link to the rejected idea, explaining why it is not a duplicate.
• An image how the code could look like, or even a before/after image side by side.
• A description of typical use cases.
• A list of potential conflicts with existing behavior, backwards compatibility, etc.
• A summary.

Getting any idea implemented, even a very good one with tons of kudos, is not very high, especially if they require deep changes. Trivial, more cosmetic ideas have a much bigger chance, even with only a moderate kudos count.. Still, most ideas never get implemented!

I seriously doubt that there are many great ideas that get rejected for lack of kudos. I assume your post here had some specific, recently rejected ideas in mind. Can you give us some links? Thanks!

I don't particularly like the "soon to be declined" tab. I expect that most ideas in that category might get maybe one of two more kudos, keeping them on life support for a few more years, even though they have no chance of ever getting implemented.

[X.]

All valid points. I don't have a particular example in mind, but I recently noticed that the "Declined Ideas" of the day (or week?) appear in one of the sections of my landing page (not labeled as such mind you) and I occasionally check a few out, only to discover that some definitely were worth some additional discussion (some I did not know about).

[altenbach]

I noticed the flurry of rejection by expiration when using the mobile forum interface while on the bus..

Here my threads are somewhat sorted by last general activity (instead of my last activity as in the desktop forum version), and I seem to have commented on a lot of these rejected ideas. This also means that if I look at my post history, there were now a few pages of bold threads on top, and most of those were expired ideas where the only new activity was the expiration notice. I had to look at all of them, just to make them disappear from the top of my post history.

Tedious! Oh well....

As requested many times (here's one started in 2006!), there should be a way to sort threds by activity even on the desktop version. It would make it so much easier to catch up. Basically, I want to see the bold stuff on top here.

[tst]

Since I'm fairly certain this isn't automated (at least not by Lithium. There is an API to the forums which NI could have used to automate this), I don't think there's any reason to expect Lithium to step into the mix and provide a solution which raises the visibility. Personally, I monitor the IE by looking at all new posts, so I would not be happy with something like an automated reply warning "this idea is about to be declined", as that would probably just increase the noise.

I think the most practical option is for a new idea to be created. If you track the IE and see an idea you care about which was declined for lack of kudos, create a new version of the same idea, but make it better. I don't like this solution for a number of reasons, but it seems to me to be the best option under the circumstances.

[X.]

My point is that you will not know of ideas which are declined unless they are advertised as such (and which might be prefectly brilliant but turn out to have been posted on Christmas Eve or before a Powerball frenzy or whatever). Therefore you will not be able to create a new better one.

This is by the way the case for most ideas, which fall behind after a week, but that's another topic altogether.

[JÞB]

I'm All in favor of an Idea Exchange Clean-up!

But, What is the threshold?

1. Here is a nice Idea with few Kudos but no Accepted / Declined Well, Wil it be implemented or not?  Make a call!
2. AHere is a "Declined" one OK, It was a nice thought but I can accept it is not the best idea out there and may not be worth the manhours needed to implement.
3. And Here is one that is still "New" but actually implemented!

There are a lot of "Case 3"'s out there! I hope the clean-up will catch most of them.

[LiliMcDonald]

We acknowledge that the Idea Exchange is in need of a more consistent experience and moderation. This is something we've been working on internally, and it helps to see these feedback topics so we know what your needs are here. tst also raised a good topic about some overall Idea Exchange Usability Issues that I invite further feedback on.

One thing to keep in mind about the "expiring ideas" is that if there had been consistent moderation in place, you would never have gotten ideas with "less than 5 kudos in 5 years" because it would have been declined before years before it reached that point. I'm sure there is also not ideal to some, but the example points to the real problem. Consistency and well defined guidelines are key here. We're coordinating with the very knowledgeable NI employees that altenbach referenced to determine the ideal process for the Idea Exchange.

Also, I just wanted to throw this out here in case anyone finds it useful, there is way to see every post in an Idea Exchange. The view isn't ideal as tst points out in his topic, but it may be useful: http://forums.ni.com/t5/forums/recentpostspage/board-id/labviewideas/tab/message

As I said, please keep the feedback coming!

Thanks,

[X.]

One other case in point: Ideas that would now belong to a different forum but were originally posted to the generic LabVIEW IE forum and got immediately lost in the noise.

I have recently sent a flurry of Moderator Notifications about "Declined" posts (this Darren is a undefatigable decliner robot) which should belong to the relatively recent Vision Idea Exchange, a forum which for whatever reason seems to get a lot more and rapid feedback from the developer(s).

I suppose this could be the case of other posts with specific topics for which IE forums have been created in the meantime.