Should suggestions for Atlassian be first phrased as questions on answers.atlassian.com or just be added to Jira?

[Gary Weaver]

There was little reward for posting requests for Atlassian in forums.atlassian.com, because many just watched the mailing list and wouldn't go onto the forum to mark a question as answered (and there was no way to vote on a question). But now with answers.atlassian.com, it seems like there are going to be a lot of shrewdly asked questions that beg action of Atlassian in some sort that are placed here to get recognition and upvoting by the rest of the community, now that it is more likely that you will get some karma by phrasing a such a question, whereas you don't get karma from submitting a popular request in Jira.

I personally think that the next step could be an OSQA Jira plugin that could easily take an answers.atlassian.com question and create an issue in the appropriate project in jira.atlassian.com, because it is bound to keep happening, but that said...

Is there any value in submitting requests for Atlassian here vs. in Jira? It seems like Jira is the place for such requests, but it sometimes takes so much wading through other tickets and having to choose the appropriate project (and maybe there isn't one) that people are just going to put requests in here and phrase them as questions.

Isn't posting such questions that are suggestions for Atlassian on answers.atlassian.com just a stopgap solution for what needs to be a huge change in Jira (and Confluence, etc. for that matter) to gamify these Atlassian products and perhaps store karma from all of these products (as well as non-Atlassian products) in a central location, either via Crowd or some new gamification centralization product yet to be released?

Anyway- the question is really this: is the appropriate way to make a request to Atlassian via a backhanded rhetorical question that can get upvoted and therefore provide karma, or should that step be skipped, sacrificing potential karma, to (only) create an issue in jira.atlassian.com?

[Gert-Jan van de Streek · Accepted solution]

Creating an issue in jira.atlassian.com is karma. It will get back to you, if not in this life, it will in an another.

Creating Jira issues has helped reporters, watchers, voters and commenters in the past. It shows the priority and status of interest of Atlassian in the issue. Issues in Jira get handled and hopefully resolved (well, at least some of them).

I doubt if the same will be the case for answers.atlassian.com where everybody can answer everybody. This might prove wrong if it turns out that suddenly there appears to be an authority that decides on every question and the final answer...

Until then: issues are karma, whereever they reside.

[Gary Weaver]

Great answer! My question was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but what I meant was "before adding an issue to Jira for a suggestion to Atlassian, should people try to rack up karma by adding the same request here?" I wasn't really doubting that it is a good idea to put it into Jira. You are right, though. It is always good karma to do the right thing. But, isn't it good to mention requests here for discussion also, especially when you can get karma? :) That is the question.

[Gert-Jan van de Streek]

Trying to get the word out here as well and pointing to the Jira issue doesn't hurt. But beware: if karma is your goal... it's not karma anymore.