No user suggestions implemented by DH in 8 mos.

Dreamhost,

There are a lot of excellent user-submitted suggestions in the control panel. According to the "completed suggestions" link, no new has been implemented since March 1st of the 2007. And apparently new user suggestions have not been submitted (or have not been publicly posted) since August of 2007. Since users don't know how many people voted on any particular thing, we don't know which is likely to be fulfilled first.

Some of the most basic suggestions have not been implemented.

So far, the suggestion box concept has been a good one, but why not take it a step further?

I'd sure like to see the following:
A method for users to see how many votes there are for each suggestion and a comments area for each suggestion where additional users may further comment as to why a particular suggestion should or shouldn't be implemented. The first comment for each suggestion should be by dreamhost staff including a likelihood of implementation and why. Additional comments could then be made by dreamhost users.

I'd like to suggest that the suggestions section allows suggestees to suggest suggestions of a suggestive nature.

On a serious note, I know that DreamHost went through a period where lots of suggestions were implemented. Most of these happened before the Great Panel Upgrade. If too many suggestions are implemented, I can predict that network performance will begin to suffer under the weight of features.

-- si-blog --

The lack of recently completed suggestions has been mentioned recently.

I think the lack of visibility into number of votes is intentional. Tons of votes doesn't mean it'll happen.

The likelihood of implementation is somewhat reflected in the number of points required to vote.

Comments would be nice, but we see from dreamhoststatus.com the wide range of comments that get tacked onto any single issue.

Maybe we'll get some new features for Christmas.

-Scott

Are additional features really what's most important right now? Or is implementing whatever they need to implement to increase reliability more important?

For instance, I'd be happier if the one-click install upgrades worked more reliably. :)

Ok, Lensman, add that to the Suggestion list. That'll cost you 999 credits.

Of course reliability is important, so keep nagging them about it. But if there's some feature someone wants, they should put it up for a vote.

-Scott

I would like to think that lots of suggestions have not been implemented recently to take some of the heat off of DH for some of the networking/DNS issues that have been occurring. They've been beaten pretty regularly for "changing things" or "innovations" rather than solving the stability issues.

It's got to be noted that the VPS solution was done quickly and in a very cool way and that seems to have helped with servers getting truly hammered by busy sites.

Wholly - Use promo code WhollyMindless for full 97$ credit. Let me know if you want something else!

I see one that has indeed been implemented recently... "Offer a 5 year pre-payment option with a further discount."!

Simplifying the hosting choices was good too. Saved me about $150.

Wholly - Use promo code WhollyMindless for full 97$ credit. Let me know if you want something else!

It was good indeed, and makes perfect sense too... it's pretty much saying "for one price you get everything you could ever need at the shared level of hosting".

I just found another that has been implemented too:
"Go carbon neutral with wind and/or solar energy, or via purchasing carbon credits."

Yeah, hey, does this mean that we need to put in the suggestion that they update suggestions with the ones they've implemented already?

One more...

"Give periodic lectures on subjects of interest to DreamHost customers."

I think Josh could label that one "done" by virtue of his blog posts alone!

I would LOVE to see a Dreamhost podcast or something... of all the hosts that SHOULD have a podcast, Dreamhost is it... just having random Dreamhost employees talking about all manner of subjects would prove to be interesting, informative, and entertaining I'm sure.

In reply to:
does this mean that we need to put in the suggestion that they update suggestions with the ones they've implemented already?

My last suggestion was close... I basically just suggested cleaning them up.

They must just leave some stuff hanging (AWStats, PostegreSQL, etc...) just to see how many people want it, even if they're not going to add it.

I guess you can get more people to participate in giving feedback if you call it making a suggestion, rather than just taking a poll. tongue

In reply to:
I guess you can get more people to participate in giving feedback if you call it making a suggestion, rather than just taking a poll.

I think its a great way of defusing demands for particular new features that for one reason or other would be either too difficult or impractical to implement. It basically allows you to say "Not enough people are interested in this feature to justify the cost of implementing it." This spreads the blame for not having this feature from just dreamhost to every one of us who hasn't voted for it. :)

I'm not saying this is why they have it, I'm just suggesting that it is a great psychological tool. It makes us feel better about not getting everything that we want. (This is a subject I'm studying with a passion where the subjects are 6 and 7 years old, respectively.)

They'll need to show the vote count if they want to use that reasoning. wink

Personally, I'd love to know how many people have voted for AWStats. It's been there forever, a lot of people go through the trouble of installing it, plus it seems that most hosts offer it -- so I'm surprised it hasn't been worked in somehow.

In reply to:
Personally, I'd love to know how many people have voted for AWStats.

I'm one of the folks who voted for AWStats. I also suggested that it could be made available as a one-click installation if a direct replacement for Analog was considered undesirable. Analog is a poor tool for doing a thorough analysis of web metrics, but self-installation of statistics software is usually too difficult for the types of people who normally study web trends.

-- si-blog --

In reply to:
... self-installation of statistics software is usually too difficult for the types of people who normally study web trends.

Hmmm... I suppose there are several ways to interpret that statement. wink

--rlparker

In reply to:
I'm not saying this is why they have it, I'm just suggesting that it is a great psychological tool. It makes us feel better about not getting everything that we want. (This is a subject I'm studying with a passion where the subjects are 6 and 7 years old, respectively.)

Someone must have kids. "Sorry kids, but there need to be at least 5 votes to add Froot Loops to the cereal list. Froot Loops has only received two votes."

-Scott

In reply to:
Comments would be nice, but we see from dreamhoststatus.com the wide range of comments that get tacked onto any single issue.

perhaps a better implementation would be that you could only comment to the dreamhoststatus.com through your web admin panel with a 'fully hosted domain' on it...i sometimes wonder how many of those folks who proclaim their sites are always down..don't even have websites at dreamhost...

Right on the money, Scott. I suspect this will only work for a couple more years. Unfortunately, they'll soon be old enough to ask how come my ideas don't have to go through the same process. I'm hoping that by that time I will have convinced them that sugar is bad.

In reply to:
i sometimes wonder how many of those folks who proclaim their sites are always down..don't even have websites at dreamhost

The status site and blog are both full of comment spam. I've looked up several domains that weren't hosted here.

No user suggestions implemented by DH in 8 mos.