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About the tag 3 threads under it out of 13 did not have answers/comments explaining why the feature was declined (however simple the explanation may be).

According to the tag excerpt a developer generally would leave a comment explaining why the status was declined or the developer tags the question according to a community consensus (like, involving high score answers/opinion-based comments).

Here is the tag excerpt:

Indicates that a request (usually a feature request) has been considered, but will not be implemented. Generally speaking, a developer will leave a comment as to why, or the community will come to consensus that the request is unnecessary.

I could not visualize the excerpt history to see if it was created/filled after the questions were tagged (got the page not found, 404 chart).

The following 3 questions are unanswered and seems to me they were not matched with the status-declined excerpt criteria:

  1. A sketching tool would be very useful

  2. bordermatrix in MathJaX

  3. Clustering picture gallery

The below threads are counter examples (the first has an answer left by a developer and the second has an answer posted by one of our mods). All the other 8 threads not cited here follow this pattern.

  1. Uploading data to site?

  2. Should there be a way to indicate answers you're especially proud of on your user profile page?

Is it ok to decline a feature-request without giving a feedback?

I mean, other users can like a certain proposal and be confused why the questions' ideas were not accepted. Also, duplicates questions might arise without being possible to mark them as duplicates (since there are no answers in the original ones).

I am looking for support to better understand how the mechanics of tagging a question status-declined works and if our specific situation here on CV Meta is ok or if it needs to be updated (regarding the first 3 cited posts).

Thanks.

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    $\begingroup$ It is not the community's responsibility to attach the status-declined tag to threads: that is done by SE developers. $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 13:15
  • $\begingroup$ @whuber. Yes. I mean (in my understanding), a dev tags a question status-declined if community makes a consensus (through updated answers, for example) or they just give a feedback for their own to explain why it was declined. So I am asking for support to understand if it is normal to have status-declined questions without feedbacks. Did I miss something in your comment (sorry I did not understand the link you posted)? May you help me to edit the unclear parts of the question (I did not like the title, but could not come up with a better one). Thanks. $\endgroup$
    – Andre Silva
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 13:23
  • $\begingroup$ I have edited the second paragraph in an attempt to address whuber's comment. $\endgroup$
    – Andre Silva
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 13:41
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    $\begingroup$ In principle everyone wants good feedback, which is as desirable as the proverbial motherhood and apple pie. In practice the person making the tag edit is usually the messenger rather than a developer, I guess. It is up to the developers to explain why they don't explain themselves, but in practice (a) many ideas are very good ideas but would no doubt be a lot of work (b) the developers don't want to start little arguments of the form "We don't think that important enough to implement" "But it is important; lots of people would use it". Again, I guess. How many developers for how many ideas? $\endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 17:53
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    $\begingroup$ I imagine that "desirable" rather than "necessary" is the key word here. $\endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 17:55
  • $\begingroup$ @NickCox, agree (let's say 90%). I would just say differently about the messenger part (but I am guessing too). I thought maybe I could receive one answer (support) from a developer (or from someone who knows the answer, if it exists). $\endgroup$
    – Andre Silva
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 18:07
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    $\begingroup$ I should perhaps emphasise that I am just trying to analyse what is happening, not judge on good or bad behaviour. But in other contexts I have seen that developers keeping quiet is, in practice, the way they have to behave. $\endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 18:13

1 Answer 1

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I imagine that "desirable" rather than "necessary" is the key word here.

Nick Cox has eloquently described both:

  1. The reason many [feature-requests] get declined without comment; and
  2. Whether or not a comment or explanation is required on a declined [feature-request].

Lots of good feature requests get tagged [status-declined] because while they are good ideas that many people on the site would probably use, they aren't strictly necessary. While our development team is growing, we still have enough of a staffing shortage that we've got to perform a significant amount of triage on [feature-requests].

So that's why those three were probably declined. I'll try and look into them further and see if there's any documentation anywhere about when they were discussed and what (if anything further) was decided.

In general, leaving an explanation is not required, but extremely desirable. Moderators and employees have the ability to use the [status-*] tags without commenting or leaving answers, but it's annoying and confusing for the other users, so we should try to avoid it.

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    $\begingroup$ I think developers and moderators have done a great job. If it is not possible to cover all threads (regarding feedbacks) at least I think you are handling the majority (e.g. here 10 out of 13). Thanks a lot for your time and for clarifying this. $\endgroup$
    – Andre Silva
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 18:36
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    $\begingroup$ @Andre We're at 12 out of 13 now - I just have no idea what to do with this one... $\endgroup$
    – hairboat Staff
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 18:39
  • $\begingroup$ Maybe it should just be closed / deleted? It seems off-topic for meta.CV, if that's possible. $\endgroup$
    – gung - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 23:12
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    $\begingroup$ I don't see a stronger case for a cluster picture gallery than for any other collection of examples, graphical or otherwise. $\endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 23:26

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