Proposing Changes: There is No Right or Wrong Way .

The most important thing for everyone to realize is that there is no right or wrong way to submit an idea. It would be premature, even unwise, to create formal rules for this process because they would only create barriers to entry and impede contributions from the widest number of people. (This is always subject to change as we work together.)

So instead of rules, here are some guidelines and things to be careful and mindful of when sending in your idea:

• Not all ideas can be accepted. If you put a lot of time into a proposal and end up not having the idea go very far, it is likely that some people may get a upset because they feel as if they "wasted their time." So, to address this consider sharing your idea with the community first, or find someway to flesh out the idea with others so that when work actually begins the idea will be more complete.

  The truth of course is that it is never a waste of time to explore an idea -- some of the best features of MT stemmed from ideas first that provided the springboard for even better ideas.

• Not all ideas can be accepted in their proposed form. If you are one to get attached to your ideas, then having that idea be modified or tweaked by others can sometimes be distressing. This is yet another reason to find some way to share your ideas with others first.

Just be mindful of the above and make the right decision for yourself*. The course of action you choose may depend greatly upon the following:

1. How dramatic of a change are you proposing? The more dramatic the change the more discussion and collaboration will be needed.

2. How controversial might the change be? For instance, decisions relating to rich text editors are notoriously touchy for any number of who-knows-why reasons.

3. How many others have expressed support for your idea? What is its strategic importance to the broader community?

With these questions in mind you can more easily determine the appropriate amount of time and energy to invest up front so that you can both increase the chances of your idea being accepted and also involve more people in the process to make the idea better.

Building a Prototype

Prototypes in the form of wireframes, mockups, HTML and CSS, or even a plugin can help a great deal in communicating what your idea is all about. Text, email and wiki pages are good for somethings and some people, but pictures really are worth a thousand words. So consider finding some way to illustrate your idea if you can. Doing so will help spur discussion online by giving people something concrete to talk about.

For those people with the ability to write a plugin, then going the extra mile and prototyping the idea as a full-fledged plugin will help also determine if an idea can be implemented apart from the core. One very reasonable determination is that the idea can't be implemented without changes to the core. This is a bug and an indication that the core API is not sufficient. Learning this in and-of-itself is incredibly useful to the community because it only helps us to expand upon what is possible.

Implementing new ideas as plugins first also helps us to reach one of design goals for Melody: to keep the core application small, while also giving you the flexibility to ship your idea ahead of an actual release. This will help you to increase buy-in and to collect feedback to refine the idea even more.

The Roadmap Ahead

So now that we have laid out of guidelines, we are curious: what idea would you like to see developed? Share with us in the comments on this post, or join the Melody mailist list!