Voting is a central part of Bitwish. It is how the members of the community can make known which of the published feature requests they feel are most desirable, or most important. Liking posts is a nice way to show support, but it is important to also vote for the features that you think should be prioritised.
All members of Bitwish are allocated ten votes. Don’t hold back - you are encouraged to cast all ten of your votes!
Votes will automatically be returned if a feature request is closed, either because the feature was implemented, or because the request was discarded. In either of these cases, the closure of the request will return all of the votes to their members. They can then be used to vote for other feature requests.
You can also choose to remove your own votes from feature requests and give them to different requests. For example, if you see a request for a feature you hadn’t thought of and think it is more deserving of one of your votes, you can remove a vote from something you previously voted for and use it for the new post. So keep your eyes on the latest posts!
If you want to check on your current votes, you can find them on your profile.
Writing a good feature request could have a companion guide about voting. As we have seen, there seems to be room for improvement in terms of number of votes cast and also the risk of people. Let’s draft and discuss here.
What is the motivation for the limited number of votes?
I understand that some limit is useful since it forces to value them more, but ten seems quite low to me.
In my case I submitted 4 drafts, which I voted for, leaving me with 6 votoes that I already used elsewhere.
All my votes are on great features and kind of strategically placed already, and this platform is still young. Even if Bitwig actively implements the request from here, at best I can probably expect to get one vote back per year. Effectively banning me from participating in this platform for the foreseeable future.
So is there another reason for the limited votes or can you elaborate on your intention?
What would you think about a system, that grants new votes every month or for participation or something like that?
A limited number of votes makes the votes valuable, yes.
There wasn’t any science put behind ten votes instead of less or more. It’s a round number. It’s probably more than the features that the Bitwig team can plan for a single release, so limiting each of us to ten votes help us putting ourselves in the shoes of the team when they plan their priorities.
If the wishlist has a value, it is its collective value. The fact that any of us are stuck with our ten votes for a long time doesn’t have value for the wishlist.
New feature requests keep landing, and maybe some people find new ones to prioritize over old votes. Maybe the new features Bitwig releases make people revise their votes. Or maybe as they evolve their use of Bitwig (or their music production in general) their priorities also shift. A clear “subgenre” of votes is people very familiar with DAW X and missing a feature in that other DAW. If they stick using Bitwig, maybe they get use to a different way to achieve that goal, or they find better goals as they get used to Bitwig’s ways.
I see what you mean. But if casting new votes is the only way to participate in this platform after a while, then we have a problem (and maybe we have it indeed). The solution cannot be to allow people to cast more votes, because that just dilutes the value of the votes, and the wishlist in general. The wishlist is the only distinct feature Bitwish offers. If we kill it by devaluating the votes, then we are left with nothing.
I’d still would hope peop[le would want to use this platform for other uses complementary to the wishlist, but so far there hasn’t been enough interest for the many ideas proposed.
