Clean-up the Revit Ideas Forum

[damo3]

Before we can vote for good ideas, we have to be able to see them. We are now over 2500 ideas submitted. I can't realistically scroll through 130+ pages of ideas.  

• There are some really good ideas buried in this forum, most will never see past a dozen votes as they are cast to page 6 or 7 due to the influx of repetitive submissions. Some are complaints, not ideas. (The irony of that statement is not lost on me)
• In the last 2 days, I have seen 6 ideas submitted that are exact replicas of others due to people not reading the forum guidelines. Item no 1: Check to see if your idea is similar to another's before posting!
• Out of 2500+ ideas, less than a dozen have been 'archived'. The rest are apparently "gathering support". Now there is a loose term if I ever saw one. 

If this is going to be a serious platform for development and feedback from customers, it needs to be maintained better. With the automation tech today, this shouldn't have to be a burden for Autodesk. 

• Let's start with tightening the term "gathering support" to ideas with at least 20 votes or more. Create a new category called "New" or "Recent"
• How about when ideas get new votes, it moves to the top, just like the Revit forum, posts that are years old float back to the top if someone comments. If it really is a good idea, it will stay at the top gathering votes and visible to all. If not, it will drop off. 
• How about new ideas can't be posted until you click a message saying you did a search before posting. Sure you can just click past it, but its a good reminder. 
• The auto "searching for similar posts" when writing the title should be just ideas, not forum posts from years ago. It just creates clutter. 
• Give us sorting options. If I want to see ideas 'under review' I also want to sort just those ideas by highest kudos for example. 

Thanks all and hopefully we can get more out of this forum. 

[Thierry.A]

"Revit Ideas" should be divided into 3 categories ARCHITECTURE / Structure / MEP, because the number of users is not the same and needs are not the same. For MEP user must go through pages and pages to find good ideas to vote.

[KM_Springfield]

@Thierry.A I think that is the idea of the categories, which if posters use correctly should offer what you want.

[Thierry.A]

Oh! sorry I had not seen it!

[dplumb_BWBR]

There should also be a "Platform" category for things that aren't discipline-specific and don't fit under the UI category

[brenan.sellers]

I agree Architects get most of the attention when it comes to Revit.

[ThierryMonteyneSWECO]

Hence the use of preset categories when creating the idea.

[Magnus.B]

I very much agree. The search function isn't very good either so finding that idea isn't easy. 

[filipefrancisco]

This is very interesting, it would help the users

[Ryan]

I don't know how many times i've created a post/idea, and then found a similar one after. Even after searching! Then, you cant delete the post that was created??! Am i missing something on that?

[SashKaz]

@damo3,

I am SO glad you mentioned this. I was planning on saying the same thing today! I am finding a lot of repeats on this forum and it is getting hard to take it seriously. Lately, I have been posting links to other peoples comments so that they are aware that a forum post already exists.

I will refrain from creating a duplicate post of this topic 🙂

Sash

[dgorsman]

Guys, if you find that you have created a duplicate idea (or the forum burped and gave you a duplicate post) and want to remove it use the "Report" tool to flag the moderator.  The "Report" tool isn't just for ground rules violations, but can also be used for other admin-type things like:

• post and idea removal
• consolidation of duplicate Ideas (that can take a little longer than others to sort out)
• editing out a serial number, email address, etc. after a post is locked from editing

As far as floating ideas, has anyone tried the "Hot topic" filter?  That normally floats more active ideas towards front of the list.

[SashKaz]

@dgorsman,

I usually start with the Hot Topics area and also the search feature. While folks like you and I do our best to research topics that have already been generated, it appears that a lot of folks don't know where to look or how to search. Perhaps the forum moderator should post a more prevalent sticky note next to the Submit an Idea button.

Sash

[damo3]

Wow, I didn't expect such a reaction! Glad others have similar thoughts.

I do use the hot topic filter, it does help, but again, lack of sorting tools doesn't help. 

The reporting tool is a good idea, I didnt think of that. Ill give it a go on one of my own ideas that never gained any traction. 

I am curious, how many votes/comments does everyone think an idea should get before its classed as 'gathering support' if the categories were updated?

[B.Fetzer]

@damo3:

Great Post !

+1

Bernhard

[d-denton]

YES! I'd like to see some sort of added categorization. Maybe one of these would help:

• Categorized by Revit ribbon menu tabs - if your suggestion applies to a tool in that tab, that's where you put it
• Categorize by industry workflow / UI suggestion. Ex: Arch Design, Struct Design, Construction, General UI Improvements. This way you're more likely to see a post similar to yours if its more workflow related

Maybe you select one from each of these so you can sort either way. Similar to tags, but it would group them in a way that everyone is already familiar with Revit.

[adrian.calabria]

I couldnt agree more. I too was thinking the same thing last week.

Autodesk
You created this and pumped your chest out, you need to maintain it. If you dont like an idea, respond to it and archive it. I'm sure there are hundreds of ideas in here that are serious time savers to users that are completely lost to both us as posters and you as developers.

[pieter5]

Great to hear that we can use the report function for other stuff as well (duplicates, status changes, request feedback, ...). I will be sure to do that.

[adrian.calabria]

I wonder if they have read this yet...

[sasha.crotty]

Yes "they" have read this a few times. I first saw it with about 10 votes 🙂

Unfortunately, we are largely bounded by the capabilities of the software we use to run the Autodesk community tools. The Revit ideas page has been so popular that I don't think this kind of maintenance was previously needed on other idea sites so a lot of what you are suggesting unfortunately does not exist. We also have to be consistent with other products (for example, the issue statuses are shared between all idea pages).

I will bring the suggestions posted here up with the community team to see if we can address any of them. I did go through and archive quite a few old issues with few votes, but I'm not done. The current plan is to archive issues with fewer than 10 votes (5 for discipline specific) that are older than 6 months. Perhaps that time period needs to be shortened. 

Regarding duplicates. If we see duplicates as we are browsing, we do clean them up. Ideas with multiple suggestions in them make this challenging. I have also seen a number of comments that cross-reference duplicates - this is really appreciated as it makes it a lot easier for us to clean up, so please keep that up. I am also considering having a place where duplicate issues can be posted (suggestions welcome). That way we can find and merge them easily. 

Hope we can work together to evolve this idea station going forward.

[damo3]

Thanks Sasha for the update and feedback. I can see how that  may make things just a tad more complicated! Hopefully the team can work out something to make it a little better for the users.

I also wanted to report that a recent suggestions in the comments about using the reporting function for things like duplicate ideas or ideas that people discover already exist are attended to by Autodesk. They recently merged the votes and comments about duplicate ideas on dialog box sizes, although my comment in the thread about the idea already exisitng and linking to it looks kind of foolish now!

So everyone can help out Autodesk by clicking that flag if you come across something like that.