Feature request guidelines

Like any open source project, Diaspora is no exception to the possibility of users suggesting features. We get feature requests all the time, and we want to help clarify what a feature request means. Please, start by checking if your feature is not already requested on Github or in our TODO-list.

What a Feature Request on GitHub is

Many users in the past have used GitHub Issues to make feature requests, and they more than often just end up cluttering up our Issue queue. The problem is that they’re purely submitting Conceptual Feature Requests, whereas on Github Issues, we use Feature Requests for something a bit different.

Feature Requests are intended on our GitHub Issues to specifically mean “I’d like to see this feature, I’m going to be working on some code to implement it.” You can think of it like a Pre-Pull Request, in which a developer signifies that he or she wants to see a feature implemented that they think would be really great, and they’re committed to coding it.

It’s a great way to launch discussions on the developer side of things because both the core team and the community developer get a chance to talk about the technical side of the feature implementation. It’s a great way to exchange ideas about how the logic could work in code.

Discussing Conceptual Feature Requests

But for those of you that aren’t coders, don’t worry. There are still ways to propose a feature and garner a discussion around it. The absolute best place to push a new idea and get discussion going is to submit an email to our Discussion Mailing List, with “[Feature Discussion]” appended to the front of the message. Don’t worry, you don’t need a Google account to join the mailing list.

There are a lot of people subscribed to the discuss list, and getting your idea to the forefront rather than putting it in a place where only community developers and the core team would read it is a great way to put an idea out there.

Feature Wishlist

There’s also a Feature Wishlist, the name is self-explanatory ;)