Allow me to briefly summarize, since I re-ignited this discussion 4 days ago:
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Many decisions are made within the team, based on observations and feedback across 100+ instances and their meta categories. Priorities are set according to the principles outlined in Jeff’s post above about complaint driven development.
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Many of these decisions may be made here on meta out in the open. If Jeff needs to make a decision when consensus cannot be reached in a timely manner, he does so.
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Small changes may be made to master / tests-passed by the core team without advance notice. Everyone has the opportunity to discuss those changes here on meta when they go live. If you don’t want to be subject to erratic changes, choose a more stable deployment branch (beta or stable).
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The team’s current priority is on customer adoption, not developer adoption.
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Community contributions are very welcome. Particularly if they solve a problem that is more important to you or the instance you run, which may not be a priority for others, but are not objectionable either. They are best discussed first here on meta as it’s necessary to get the team’s buy-in before it will be merged into core.
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It has been demonstrated that there is a path toward becoming more involved if you put your focus on solving real problems.
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There are differing views on how transparent the process of making decisions should be and how researching and discussing UX problems and solutions should be done.
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The team does not want to be paralyzed by discussing every change ahead of time on meta, especially for small things. There’s always the opportunity to make adjustments based on complaints and other feedback.
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There is some sympathy for the idea of being more transparent about their goals in the form of a loose roadmap. Perhaps we’ll hear more about this in the future.