I'd like to focus on your last point 'Knowing what to not implement'.
This is about dealing with feedback by users. I am tempted to say that as I user I have experienced the whole range of developer reaction to user feedback. It ranged from an enthusiastic reaction along with a new beta version to test in my inbox a few hours later to being ignored to being told my idea was stupid to being told that they weren't interested in the idea at the moment.
I find the middle two reactions quite frustrating. While the last one is a good way of dealing with this. Unless it's a real bug that you report, a suggestion is just a suggestion, it would be nice to have but you don't expect it. Being told right away that the suggestion won't make it, leaves you with the impression that the developer cares and is honest about things, you also don't expect to see the feature in the software and you won't keep downloading updates hoping for it to appear some day. This prevents long-term disappointment with very little effort.
by ssp — Jun 27
This is about dealing with feedback by users. I am tempted to say that as I user I have experienced the whole range of developer reaction to user feedback. It ranged from an enthusiastic reaction along with a new beta version to test in my inbox a few hours later to being ignored to being told my idea was stupid to being told that they weren't interested in the idea at the moment.
I find the middle two reactions quite frustrating. While the last one is a good way of dealing with this. Unless it's a real bug that you report, a suggestion is just a suggestion, it would be nice to have but you don't expect it. Being told right away that the suggestion won't make it, leaves you with the impression that the developer cares and is honest about things, you also don't expect to see the feature in the software and you won't keep downloading updates hoping for it to appear some day. This prevents long-term disappointment with very little effort.