Hey Skritter Team,

I really don't want to come across as passive aggressive, but if this idea doesn't gain any tractions, then I think I am just going to ignore this forum and not bother offering up any suggestions to improve this app (...which some people may not mind!). This is because it seems that function requests are just getting steadily rejected, many of which, I believe, would enhance the Skritter experience. So I think I might as well just focus on removing my reviews.

What I am proposing is that the Skritter team adds an area on the website where people can propose functional enhancements for Skritter. Then "Skritters" are able to vote or comment on those enhancements. I got the idea from FluentU (http://fluentu.uservoice.com/). You could link to the major ideas in your newsletter and through that more users could add ideas about enhanced functions.

This has an added benefit for you guys, because you are able devote app improvements towards the areas that are truly wanted by a large section of your users. All of your users know that you only have a finite amount of time that you can devote to improving the app - so they respect that not all ideas will be able to be explored. However, as the mood of your forum highlights, your users want an app that is evolving.

The reason why I am offering up this idea is because it gives Skritter users knowledge about potential ideas to improve the app. I am a keen reader of the forum, but in the past I have heard Nick and co say – in response to a function request – that the idea had been raised but no-one really wanted it. In several of these instances, I had no knowledge that this request had been raised as it probably had been raised privately.

I know you have the vote app on the front page, but that is very very selective.

Hopefully, other Skritters like the idea.

Semi-rant-but-definitely-with-love-infused over!

Cheers,
Joe

agree

Agreed. I too have been frustrated with the, seeming, lack of further development.

There are improvements to be made to the app, and possibly the website, that would would greatly enhance user experience. I'm disappointed that virtually all suggestions these days seem to be ignored or rejected.

While I am pretty happy with how Skritter is right now, I do think this is a great idea. It seems like every other day some one has a request and while some of them sound like they would provide a great benefit to many users, other requests seem a bit too narrow in their use. I think a seperate area on the website to discuss functions, vote, give feedback, as well as get updates and responses from the skritter crew would be helpful.

I vote for you clearing your reviews instead and stopping messing with stuff that works fine

@Everyone-else-except-Xiaomai5 - thanks for your responses!

@Xiaomai, I am not too sure how raising function requests is messing with something that works. Going by your odd train of logic, all the enhancements that went into the last couple of updates were messing with something that works. I was able you to learn characters beforehand? It worked fine. So why did the Skritter development team have the hide to change the app!!?

If you had bothered to read my post clearly, you would have noticed that I was advocating having a forum that could raise functional requests and provide a free brains-trust service to the Skritter developers. It would also provide a way for them to gauge what are the functions that Skritter users truly want.

Conversely, I have a suggestion for you, until you shake off your seemingly Luddite sensibilities...why don't your refrain from making inane comments.

uservoice would be cool

Kindly keep a civil tone and refrain from personal insults. Offensive messages will be moderated.

I am using an iphone to learn mandarin.. How on earth is that Luddite, lol

Hi Joey, the issue of a public issue list is something we first discussed back in 2008 when we were first starting the site. Back then we saw it as a way to let the community get a sense of how fast we were working on the codebase and as a way to encourage engagement. We decided not to open our issue list then because we were concerned that it would hamper our ability to prioritize the tasks/bug fixes that were critical to keep things going. In hindsight, it was the right choice.

These days, the codebase has become so vast that a public issue list would suffer from the opposite problem: it would appear that we aren't making any progress. Between forking everything for the iOS app, rewriting the backend to be HTML5 compliant, sunsetting the AS3 app, and managing a bunch of our backend tool chain, we just don't feel like it would be respectful to our users to publish a list of issues and constantly prioritize those that weren't quick, easy, or public-facing.

I write all this to say that we have very carefully considered the idea of making our development more transparent, but have decided on several occasions over the last 5.5 years to keep things closed. We realize that doesn't sit well for all users, but want to make sure you know it wasn't a decision we took lightly.

@xiaomai5 and @jww1066 Thanks for helping out on the thread, you guys have been a huge help.

@George, cheers for the thoughtful response mate. I strongly disagree though. However, It is useless to argue why, because I am not the one who is sitting in the Skritter developer's tent and it seems you guys have really thought about it.

@Xiaomai5, I will shoot you a private message to explain why. I don't want any zealotry forum moderators to 和谐 my response.

Good night