I trust Ton. I’ve been following Blender for 14 years and all changes are for the better over time. However the f-key and g-key are too damn close 
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The open question is what exactly you would want to use it for and how much of the development should be steered with this sort of system.
It would likely increase the management burden for the developers. Way more decisions would need to be justified, like delaying the development of certain features as they are fitting way better later on, or handling of badly formulated requests.
To give an example of badly formulated requests would be if someone created a request to improve the performance of the viewport. If you look at the forum here, everyone agrees that it needs to be improved, but upon closer inspection, there are plenty of different issues people are facing. They seemingly talk about the same thing, but as a matter of fact, they are not. How would you deal with such a situation or who would disentangle the mess?
If questions appear before or during the development, who would be responsible? If users suggest improvements, which one should be implemented, the original one or one of the suggestions?
I believe that this would most likely not work to be honest as it would be way too complicated. From my point of view, it would be more practical, if the developers looked at the topics from time to time, picked some popular ones out, made sure they are properly specified and have an additional voting system to let the users vote among those curated topics.
I think the biggest issue is currently how the keybinds are configured, and how each addon uses different conventions on their user interface. Even if you have a great configuration, if you don’t effectively communicate it to the user, it won’t be any use.
Everything exists inside a flat hierarchy, so the user is immediately front-loaded with everything, which is far from optimal. Good example of this the right panel in 3D view if you install many addons. There no rhyme or reason there. Also it can’t be edited by the user unless you want to dive into every Python file yourself every update to change it manually.
Also how do you navigate handling keybinds with various addons from different separate authors? Each addon having their separate local maps instead of dumping it into the operator based global map would be nice. Is this a thing or was it just me not finding it?
Having a way to change global keybinds that manipulate things in multiple different areas would be nice. For example drag the view port in the image editor or 3D view shouldn’t necessarily be a different key-bind configuration. There should be a way to easily change global parent keybinds that propagate downwards to their child nodes.
I don’t honestly have any idea why the clickable buttons on the left were added. What’s the workflow and what is their purpose? To make new users feel welcome? It introduces a completely orthogonal way of doing the exact same things Blender has always done. At least where I’m concerned, this was not effectively communicated.
Given good defaults and logical hierarchy on where to put new features, adding a lot of new features quickly really shouldn’t be a problem, ideally.
Pie Menu Editor helps a lot when you can easily categorize all kinds of operators yourself, just by right clicking on the operator and add to pie/menu.
I find having to customize a friendly and effective interface out of the current state of things if you want to use the power of multiple cool addons is extremely difficult.
…so you don’t think that when big players join the pile, dropping money, that Blender can take it easy and relax along?
I like your laid-back point of view ^^ …I hope you are right
They are joining because they are trusting the Blender Foundation and the whole development.
It doesn’t matter where the money is coming from. It is important to spend it thoroughly.
No one is talking about relaxing. But it really shouldn’t make a difference for the day to day work whether big names are somehow involved.
If you get panic because of some names, it is more likely that the quality of your work is negatively impacted. But if your work improves because of that, you haven’t done a good job in the past! Both are rather undesirable in my opinion and I prefer business as usual.
I mean is it supposed to be a voting system with some form of authority or is it just going to be RCS, cause we already have RCS so I didn’t think thats what we were talking about.
I agree here. If we’re talking about suggestion voting, we have RCS as you said. But an actual democratic system for implementing features? The hobbyists and inexperienced hold a lot of weight over the experienced users. So you’d be putting direction in the hands of those that don’t even know enough to know what they don’t know…
…Actually, thinking about this as I type, I can see two sides. On the one, you might end up with novel ideas, unbound by the rigid thinking of “Well that’s just the way we do it in the industry”. I’ll admit I do learn new techniques from time to time by the newer kids. On the other hand, if those less experienced folks don’t understand the bigger picture, some of those novel gains could lead to massive gotchas in the long run.
So kind of a toss up, really. Some old conventions should die, and some have been molded from years of perfection.
And yes, I changed my opinion mid type, rather than just retyping. 
Right but discussions can and will still happen. I don’t see why novel new ideas can’t continue to come up.
Of course. I don’t disagree with you there.
That’s why such a voting system should be filtered first, before it reaches the developers. For example, each entry should exist for at least one month or so, so the community has plenty of time to upvote or downvote it. This is an important filter. Then, only the top 5 percent of the highest-voted suggestions / feedback would be sent to a special section of https://developer.blender.org/ , where the filtered, really useful suggestions / feedback will directly reach the developers.
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Well, but thats my point, though. We already have RCS. All that is perhaps needed then is just a few more experienced users going through that list and curating it so to speak. Just a set of people acting as a bridge between.
Curators are an option, but what I’m afraid of is that a small panel of moderators will select based on their personal preferences, which is basically a bit what is happening among the Blender developers at the moment. I’d rather see it automated as I mentioned here.
I haven’t read everything in this topic, but I love that there’s zero respect for the current state of Blender within Blender development, because much of Blender is still super obtuse and really bad.
They should change it, and I congratulate them every time they do!
What’s dangerous is that it’s still developers and not artists or designers making these changes, and that’s what killed mass market appeal for Blender in the past (the recent sculpt developer who is an artist is a unique exemption).
Blender only recently got a single UI designer, and only recently got a “design” bug submission category.
It has a long, long way to go, but finally the money to structure this, and Ton Rosendaal has said that a chunk of the money will go towards that, so at least I’m not worried.
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Regarding the overall development, how much should they consider those forwarded tasks in your opinion? Should those be the main tasks or some additional tasks or should it be more flexible?
Taking the strong filtering I mentioned into account, resulting in a very refined, relatively small amount of much-upvoted suggestions and feedback, I think what’s delivered to the developers should really be considered, and if it’s not implemented / changed, then the developers should need to provide a good explanation why that decision is made.
And how much of the overall development should be handled like that?
Good questions. I think the developers should not be pressured. I’d start very subtle, and introduce a test phase to see if it works out. According to the results, the process could be expanded.
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It seems you’re just descriping right click select more or less then
Yep (see my earlier posts), but RCS is independent of Blender development. Blender devs will undoubtedly sometimes visit the site every now and then, but they’re not connected to the platform. I’d like to see the door being opened between RCS (or a similar initiative) and the Blender developer realm.
Well, this is the big issue, isn’t it? Having a quasi-closed beta with a filtering system to ensure only very experienced users engage and give valuable production/real-world feedback/suggestions. This weeds out many of the potential beta testers whose input might be pretty useless by the mere fact that they haven’t got the experience/knowledge of the program, or indeed using it as a professional tool or in a studio pipeline.
This is how it’s done with the commercial DCCs, but would surely go against the spirit of Blender and appear elitist. Realistically, though, this is the only way to ensure valuable feedback and not just a free-for-all which might just end up as a trollfest.
The sad thing is that these forums and this community is a fantastic resource that is going to waste if devs don’t visit here. I’ve only been aboard the Blender train in the last few months, but what I see here is the best online 3D community I think I’ve ever seen in 15 years of doing this. The engagement, the level of knowledge, the passion, the commitment, the consistency, and the sheer volume of traffic is impressive. Maybe this seems rose-tinted from a BA newcomer, but that’s how I see it(believe me, I’ve spent enough time in the sometimes echo-chamber of the Max beta forums over the years)
For me, it’s going to waste and could easily be utilised for a ‘beta’ purpose. Have a ‘beta’ board with sub-threads: modeling/UVs/texture painting/rigging/etc. Users simply download and test nightly builds and give feedback and ideas for improvements/changes/possible features…
devs monitor the boards, implement suggestions, rinse/repeat. This is the only way to ensure that the program is rigorously put through its paces by a diverse mixture of artists from all sectors and using real-world production-like environments…in theory at least.
Programmers CAN NOT do this alone. Artists must give feedback. It’s the only way. So many great ideas in 3D programs are all too often poorly designed/implemented by coder/engineer brains. Again, Max has suffered greatly from this over the years.
Take a toolset like Hops/BC, for instance, and masterxeon’s workflow. This is a perfect example of what can be achieved when great programmers/artists work together solving real-world problems with real-world workflow solutions. Programmers need that feedback. It is essential in the design process.
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