# UserVoice vs Discourse **URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/uservoice-vs-discourse/96256 **Category:** Community Building **Created:** [September 3, 2018, 10:52am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uservoice-vs-discourse/96256 "2018-09-03T10:52:41Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 3
### Author: ![erlend\_sh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/erlend_sh/32/119475_2.png) [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh) #### Post date: [September 4, 2018, 9:30am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uservoice-vs-discourse/96256/3 "2018-09-04T09:30:09Z")
I dare say the majority of public Discourse forums deal in some kind of open product development. While we do support up-voting functionality similar to UserVoice with our [Voting plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-voting/40121), most communities don’t need it. Any product community that solicits feedback from users will commonly be practicing some form of [complaint-driven development](https://blog.codinghorror.com/complaint-driven-development/). Discourse’s edge over UserVoice is that it’s a more holistic approach. In our model you don’t just put a spotlight on the “most wanted”, you also discuss anything that could work slightly better, is hard to understand or is straight up broken. And unlike vote-focused idea blurbs with drive-by comments, Discourse’s sustained discussions enable users & staffers to continuously hack away together at a crudely formed idea until they’re left with an informal specification. You’ll see this pattern repeating itself in many of our [feature discussions here on Meta](https://meta.discourse.org/c/feature?order=likes). Other notable communities excelling at open product development include: ### Eve Tech [https://eve.community/](https://eve.community/) A device shop whose main selling point is that their products are designed by their community. They do employ Voting to a small extent, but the bigger story is that their entire forum is one giant roadmap discussion. ### Soylent and Huel > **[Huel](https://discourse.huel.com/)** > > A forum for Huel users in North America to discuss all things Huel! [https://discourse.soylent.com/](https://discourse.soylent.com/) Two similar product lines with a similar product strategy: Let users talk about any experience, good and bad, and embrace the bad (not every body takes in a liquid meal with ease) with honest discussion rather than silencing it. Show me a focus group that would provide these companies with anywhere near the same amount of data and I’ll eat my 🎩 ### EVE Online > **[EVE Online Forums](https://forums.eveonline.com/)** > > Player-created empires, player-driven markets, and endless ways to embark on your personal sci-fi adventure. It’s hard to make a pick among game forums as game makers are one of our biggest [customer segments](https://www.discourse.org/customers) and they’ve been at the forefront of community-informed design for decades. Games lend themselves incredibly well to discussion about their rules, characters, aesthetic, balance, story, etcetera. A very common way of soliciting feedback from game testers is to silently watch the tester play your game and take notes. Afterwards you have a discussion about the play experience. An open forum is like that second part but scaled up 1000x. ### In conclusion You’ve probably heard this quote before: > If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. > > _~ Henry Ford > (according to legend, and that’s good enough)_ This anecdote neatly encapsulates Discourse’s approach to open product development. You don’t arrive at a better design by pitting hundreds of features against each other in a vote-war. All of those features are parts of a greater whole. There’s only so much to be gained by having people shout their ideas at you. What you really want is meticulous discussions with a beginning, a middle and an end. You’re not always gonna get a happy ending, but if the story is good enough someone else will eventually tell it again, this time with a twist. --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/uservoice-vs-discourse/96256)._