[Pan-users] The Four Ways To Get Your Feature Included in Pan

[Charles Kerr]

Duncan wrote:

> BTW, I tried looking for rules to do something with the scores,
> but that's missing in >.90.  There has been some discussion of
> doing things that require rules (and I was explaining how they
> worked <.90).  However, as I've seen no hints from you on it,
> I'm guessing they won't be back until after 1.0, correct?

I suspect that Rules only has a few useful options not covered
by scoring.  My evidence is the *zero* bugzilla tickets asking
for any rules features to return, and the very few requests on
pan-users, the only one I can recall is deleting low-scoring articles.
Maybe we're better off with a "delete low-scoring articles" setting.

This makes me think of the 50+ feature requests filed in bugzilla
during Pan's hiatus.  Over half went literally 3-4 years without
a single person seconding the request.  Each of those would have
been a lot of work for very little (maybe a single user!) payoff.

What about requests made on pan-users, I hear you ask.
Yes, pan-users is VERY important for hammering out ideas as a group,
for short-term bug reports (i.e., 0.98's build errors), for Q&A,
and fun chit-chat.  But mailing lists are bad for request tracking.
How many of you remember, for example, the May 16 request to give
the header pane focus when we load a group? I'd forgotten about it,
even though at the time I said I liked the idea. :)

Without any further ado, here are The Four Canonical Ways To Get
Your Feature Included in Pan (tm):

(1) Write it yourself, create a bugzilla ticket, and attach a patch.
    I recommend this method very highly. ;)

(2) Perennial feature requests on pan-users (such as
    multiserver and "fix the multipart yenc image display!")
    will eventually get in.

(3) Hammer out an idea for a feature on pan-users,
    then file a bugzilla request and tell other pan-users about
    it so that they can second, third, or fourth it.

(4) File a buzilla request that I like enough to implement
    even if nobody seconds it.  A few features are like this,
    but more often these are bug reports and small tweaks.

I hope this clears up any confusion.

cheers,
Charles