How we decide what to build next

I get a lot of messages that start with "have you thought about adding..." The answer is usually yes, followed by a longer answer about why it isn't done yet. So that the longer answer is written down somewhere, this is how we actually decide what to build.

Everything goes on one board

Every request from Help & Support, the comments or a direct message ends up on one shared board. If three people ask for the same thing in different words, I merge them and keep count. The count matters more than how loudly anyone asked.

Three questions before anything gets built

• Does it help members talk to each other, or does it just add another button?
• Can a small community running UNA on its own server use it too, or does it only work at our size?
• Will moderators have to clean up after it?

If the answer to the last one is yes, it waits until we've built the moderation tools to go with it. That rule has saved us more than once.

Small things ship first

Fixes that take a day but annoy everyone get done before big features that take a month. Most of what changed this summer falls into that bucket: faster image loading, better notification grouping and fewer accidental double posts.

The board isn't perfect, and some requests sit there longer than they should. But every suggestion gets read and counted, even the ones we end up saying no to.