Then I spend two days, researching some of the projects, reading through their docs, signing up, using their service, and writing detailed feedback. The feedback took around 20 minutes of research and another 10-20 minutes of writing. After writing long comments, the response was almost always the same, one upvote, one thank you. However, after getting a response, I asked for feedback back, aand, was ignored, completely. Either a single upvote, or nothing at all. This actually confused me a bit. Developer might not give feedback anymore, but will they not even give feedback if they receive feedback themselves?
That was my next post. I asked developers, would you give feedback if someone gave it to you? Surprisingly, the answer was yet, in almost all cases. Then what was the problem? It was freedom, actually. Users had the choice of giving feedback or not giving feedback, and because not giving feedback is faster, people opted to not give it at all. I talked to a few fellow devs that responded, and they agreed. Devs gone lazy, they do not want to give feedback if they dont have to. An enforcement of some kind, like, 1 Feedback required per 1 Post, would encourage giving feedback slightly. But there was still one issue that a user pointed out. Devs would not give feedback, because it takes too long.
After a long discussion with the fellow redditor, we both agreed on the fact that asking for structured feedback would cut the time for writing and reading, as the user would not need to write as much, and the reader would not need to read as much.
But this was all still theory, so I had to put it to the test. I asked a few devs if they were ready to give feedback to someone if they knew they would get quality feedback back, I found a few devs that said they were ready, and paired them, without them knowing about it. I requested their website with structured questions, and then send it to the other person, and then did the same with the other person. The result? A massive improvement. Mind you, both of the users were ignored within their subreddits beforehand.
So what is the issue? Well, I am the middle man, and not a good one at that. So I decided to program a website that implements what I do. My goal is to build a community platform where developers exchange feedback together, making sure that everybody gets feedback, and nobody gets ignored.
What do you guys think though? The experiments seemed like a proof of concept to me. Can feedback be brought back?
vunderba•1h ago
I take a little time out of my day each week to browse "Show New" and offer some constructive feedback. I wish others would do the same, but c’est la vie.
As for your idea there have been a few attempts at this in the past, usually in smaller more intimate settings. I’m part of a private Discord with only about a dozen other devs who do exactly this, but we all know each other, so there’s a camaraderie that encourages everyone to share and give feedback.
xerrs•1h ago
The Discord example you mentioned is interesting though. A lot of the good feedback exchanges I've seen seem to happen in small private groups where people know each other, like friend groups.
The thing I'm trying to figure out is whether something like that dynamic can work with strangers if the incentives are structured correctly. My small experiment pairing devs up seemed promising, but it's obviously a tiny sample size.
I myself browse through new reddit posts to check out new projects and give them feedback to, and used this account to share this project and spark a discussion, though it is fair that it seems ironic with a single karma on my side.