Software upgrade voting

==Reasons for voting==

The user community should steer the upgrades of the Gosia suite and the Rachel GUI.  This system will not differentiate between upgrades to the GUI and to the Gosia 'engine,' so that the [[programmers|programming contributors]] can decide on the most effective way to make upgrades based on a greater understanding of the codes.

Suggested software improvements may be submitted to the [http://www-user.pas.rochester.edu/~gosia/phpBB3/ Gosia forum].  The contributing programmers will add these suggestions to the ballots for voting if they are likely to be beneficial to the user community in full.

==Programming decisions==

Upgrades that can be made by simple upgrades to the GUI will be made in the GUI code, since this will result in a shorter time to implementation than an upgrade to Gosia itself.  Some upgrades will require a change to the Gosia code itself.  This will be determined by the programming contributors.

==Voting system==

A preferential voting system [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_voting] system will be created online to make sure that the most important upgrades to the user community are given the highest priority.  Voting will be allowed continuously, and ranking of the upgrade priorities will be done periodically.

==How to vote==

[[how to vote|How to vote]]

==Conditions that will circumvent voting==

#Upgrades that are necessary to fix [[known bugs]] will be given priority by the programming contributors directly.  These may take priority over improvements that do not address known bugs.  
#In some cases where improvements involve simple changes to codes, the programmers may decide to make improvements before those ranked highest by the user community.
#If a programming contributor makes a well-coded improvement to address personal needs, this change may be released regardless of voter ranking.  These upgrades must not cause a considerable hardship to the user community.

==Notes==

==Links==