Improving quality of participation in the "Feature Request Project
I was looking everywhere for a "Comment" button...
For thousands of years, many cultures across the globe have believed that "in the beginning, was the WORD". Names matter. I think "Requests" is the wrong framing for this project. From the guidelines, it seems that this is intended more for discussion, brainstorming, and fleshing-out new work on CiviCRM.
Feature Specifications? Feature Brainstorms?
I think there is an implicit bias and barrier to entry for participation in this project. It gives privilege to professionals skilled in requirements gathering AND/OR people with lots of time on their hands to wrangle community participation. Do we not want ideas to be promoted on merit, not only on the resources of the backers? Honest question. If we just want to facilitate those with resources... then I guess that's what we'll do.
I think there could be a lot of benefit to having a place to attract casual "requests". A good old suggestions box. In a past life, I was taught to treasure all customer feedback because for every complaint or compliment, there were 10 other customers who think the same and won't take the time to give you the feedback. If we create a place to catch that casual feedback, we could avoid having chaos in the space for delving deep into scoping of projects.