Comment 642 for bug 532633

Jd Evora:

First of all I think you put too much weight behind Brainstorm as a tool to drive change inside Ubuntu. You actually shouldn't be at all surprised that Brainstorm popularity has very little influence over design decisions. It's never had influence in any technical decision making and no one in a position of authority inside Canonical or Ubuntu governance has ever claimed that it has. Canonical nor the external Ubuntu governance structures make it a policy to rely heavily or to even officially review highly popular ideas in Brainstorm on a regular basis or part of technical decision making or public governance discussion. Were highly popular Brainstorm ideas even discussed in an organized session during the UDS in the run up to 10.04?

The track record of implemented ideas backs up my point. You look really closely at the ideas marked implemented in Brainstorm and they are at best mediocre in terms of Brainstorm popularity. None of the highly popular ideas in Brainstorm get implemented..or even discussed publicly as a matter of technical decision making or governance. Take for example the music store idea. It has a negative voting total and is marked implemented.

It's wishful thinking to suggest that Brainstorm popularity plays an important role in decision making. It doesn't. At best brainstorm is a dumping ground for random ideas. There's no evidence that the voting process correlates with feature development or decision making at all.