We don't know yet! That's why we haven't said anything -- the specs are still totally up in the air, and will depend on what a). the community wants and b). we think we can support. So, we'll have to look at the traffic and usage patterns, along with the paid account percentages, and see what kind of stuff we can deliver. I can pretty comfortably say that we won't be able to offer it until we move from dedicated-server hosting (we're with Slicehost right now) to colocation, which we hope to be able to do quickly, but we don't have a firm date on.
The reason we haven't specced photo hosting yet is because we actually want to use that as our first example of how we're going to design major changes or major new features. The way it will work will be:
* We post somewhere outlining the broad summary of the project -- "We want to add photo hosting" -- and ask the community what they would want to see in that feature, what they would find really useful, what they would find not useful, etc;
* We take all of that feedback and design a functional spec, then post it and say "here's the spec; what are we missing, what did we get wrong, what do you really love?"
* We take that feedback and revise the spec, incorporating what we can and explaining why we can't/won't incorporate the rest;
* We turn the spec over to whoever will be doing the frontend design and have them do mockups of the pages involved;
* We post those, and ask people "okay, what do you find confusing about this, what do you hate, what do you think would be hard to use," etc;
* We revise the mockups based on that feedback, incorporating what we can and explaining why we can't/won't incorporate the rest;
* We turn specs & mockups over to the programmer who'll be working on it.
That's the right balance between incorporating user feedback and the hell of something that is designed-by-committee, I think. We won't be including everything that everyone wants, because many bits of feedback will be mutually exclusive, but we need to be able to at least explain why we won't include something, or justify our choices for which of the two mutually exclusive options we pick.
no subject
The reason we haven't specced photo hosting yet is because we actually want to use that as our first example of how we're going to design major changes or major new features. The way it will work will be:
* We post somewhere outlining the broad summary of the project -- "We want to add photo hosting" -- and ask the community what they would want to see in that feature, what they would find really useful, what they would find not useful, etc;
* We take all of that feedback and design a functional spec, then post it and say "here's the spec; what are we missing, what did we get wrong, what do you really love?"
* We take that feedback and revise the spec, incorporating what we can and explaining why we can't/won't incorporate the rest;
* We turn the spec over to whoever will be doing the frontend design and have them do mockups of the pages involved;
* We post those, and ask people "okay, what do you find confusing about this, what do you hate, what do you think would be hard to use," etc;
* We revise the mockups based on that feedback, incorporating what we can and explaining why we can't/won't incorporate the rest;
* We turn specs & mockups over to the programmer who'll be working on it.
That's the right balance between incorporating user feedback and the hell of something that is designed-by-committee, I think. We won't be including everything that everyone wants, because many bits of feedback will be mutually exclusive, but we need to be able to at least explain why we won't include something, or justify our choices for which of the two mutually exclusive options we pick.