Discourse roadmap?

Do y’all publish a roadmap? I’d like to browse it to see what (if any) of the topics that are important to me could be expected in the near future, if ever. :smiley:

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We do have something lightweight:

is this what you’re thinking about?

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This is helpful. And I was hoping for something both longer term and broader, outlining general direction for the product.

Like, do you see the need to work on

  • Admin UX [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] (looks like some of this may be in 3.2…)
  • Settings [1, 2] (ditto?)
  • Notifications [1, 2]
  • Assignments [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]
  • Leaderboard [1, 2]

It would let me know what I should 'bate my breath for and what I should lobby harder for :wink: (or find budget $ for).

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In that topic I feel like we’re highlighting our direction for the foreseeable future. In brief we have areas we care about:

  • our admins (staff experience and AI),
  • our communities (chat and AI),
  • communities in the wild (migrations),
  • and our plugin/theme authors (modernJS and platform)

I get the feeling you’re looking for something else perhaps?

Just acknowledging that we’ve seen these quality of life requests. Thank you for writing them, it will help as more folks find them and +1. It’s no secret we’re strong proponents of The Rule of Three (tldr at the bottom of the post) – it makes it easier for us to prioritise work that helps many people with the same problem.

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I was hoping for something past January :joy:

But okay. Thanks

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Ah alright. Thanks for the reply. But yes, it would be nice to see a ‘deeper’ glimpse into what’s being planned :star_struck:

On a game I play they have a development timeline which shows what they are planning. They don’t post too far ahead for example they don’t post what to expect in 2024 but some stuff to look forwards to in the first update of 2024. This could always be scaled to show more long term plans?

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I would also love a better insight into the timeline, however I understand if there is a desire to keep certain cards closer to the chest.

A common issue with timelines is the concrete expectation and obligations they can create. This can be strategically disadvantageous because you’re losing the flexibility to pivot on a dime towards something significant like AI when such an opportunity arises. Of course you could negotiate such a change with customers and users, however that takes very significant effort.

In my experience, this effort often slows down the attainment of both the original commitment and the new opportunity.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of the additional effort prematurely publicising certain ideas can create:

and most importantly Authority Dilution. The team know best, but the public can be very passionate about going in the wrong direction sometimes.

Overall, I would be concerned about the loss of flexibility and exploratory safety such a roadmap could cause, as much as I would love to have one.

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I liked your deep dive into this. I didn’t think of potential issues in such detail. However, I think whilst you raise good points the timeline doesn’t need to be ‘swayed’ by users - like you say the Team know best.

I agree with this. As a result of this, in the community I linked above they changed the way they ship updates. They don’t give out release dates its all soon™ This way you still get to see plans on what is being made etc but you just have to wait it out.

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To be clear, I’m not asking for “concrete expectation[s] and obligations”.

I was hoping for something like

In 2024 we plan to work on these areas:

  • foo
  • bar
  • baz
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