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1. A Thing:tm: is announced, occasionally at the same time as
2. The Thing:tm: is rolled out, optionally as an alpha or beta test
3. Bugs are discovered
4. ... only some of which are fixed (at best), resulting in anything from non-critical to outright breaking and destructive bugs lingering for anywhere from a few months to, more commonly years or never being fixed.
5. If the thing was rolled out as alpha or beta, it's then released to the general public in a broken state, with many of the reported bugs remaining; see again the editor and the wizard.

1. A Thing™ is announced, occasionally at the same time as
2. The Thing™ is rolled out, optionally as an alpha or beta test
3. Bugs are discovered
4. ... only some of which are fixed (at best), resulting in anything from non-critical to outright breaking and destructive bugs lingering for anywhere from a few months to, more commonly years or never being fixed.
5. If the thing was rolled out as alpha or beta, it's then released to the general public in a broken state, with many of the reported bugs remaining; see again the editor and the wizard.

I'm not fundamentally opposed, but I don't feel these necessarily are the solutions to real problems in the network right now.

I'm not fundamentally opposed, but I don't feel these necessarily are the solutions to the real problems in the network right now.

As has been mentioned much worse by you (the company, to be clear) in the past, meta isn't all that representative of most users. Many users don't even interact with meta, nor know about its existence. For many, the featured tag (and HMP) is the only way they see content on meta. Any group you form is likely going to be based on the same group of meta regulars - election or not. Without onboarding, it doesn't really matter if you do or don't implement the PAC; it isn't going to increase the number of users interacting with meta, and by extension, who provide feedback.

Representativeness of users aside, the majority of the problem has always been that the community proposes a lot of alternatives, and nothing happens. In response to:

That's because it isn't just a feeling. If you browse feature-request on meta.SE or meta.SO (as well as child metas, but to a lesser extent because volume differences), you will find plenty of highly upvoted and well-received ideas for improvements. You'll find similar issues with bugs and even feedback posts posted by the company

More importantly, and arguably the biggest problem, is when this happens on feedback posts. From our perspective, here's how many feature releases go (see, most recently, wizard 2.0 and the new editor; for mods, see also this mod team post for an upcoming severe tool breakage with a question that has been posed for over half a year):

1. A Thing:tm: is announced, occasionally at the same time as
2. The Thing:tm: is rolled out, optionally as an alpha or beta test
3. Bugs are discovered
4. ... only some of which are fixed, resulting in anything from non-critical to outright breaking and destructive bugs lingering for anywhere from a few months to, more commonly years or never being fixed.
5. If the thing was rolled out as alpha or beta, it's then released to the general public in a broken state, with many of the reported bugs remaining; see again the editor and the wizard.

It doesn't really matter where you start at this point; start with one of the many, many highly upvoted bug reports or feature requests on meta, and you immediately build both some tentative confidence and trust that there is a path forward that doesn't result in yet another broken promise, and only short-term betterment.

As has been mentioned much worse by you (the company, to be clear) in the past, meta isn't all that representative of most users. Many users don't even interact with meta, nor know about its existence. For many, the featured tag (and HMP) is the only way they see content on meta. Any group you form is likely going to be based on the same group of meta regulars - election or not. Without onboarding, it doesn't really matter if you do or don't implement the PAC; it isn't going to increase the number of users interacting with meta, and by extension, who provides feedback.

Representativeness of users aside, the majority of the problem has always been that the community proposes a lot of alternatives, and nothing happens. This is particularly in response to:

That's because it isn't just a feeling. If you browse feature-request on meta.SE or meta.SO (as well as child metas, but to a lesser extent because volume differences), you will find plenty of highly upvoted and well-received ideas for improvements. You'll find similar issues with bugs and even feedback posts posted by the company. The problem here is significantly larger than you make it out to be.

More importantly, and arguably the biggest problem, is when this happens on feedback posts to feature rollouts. From our perspective, here's how many feature releases go (see, most recently, wizard 2.0 and the new editor; for mods, see also this mod team post for an upcoming severe mod tool breakage with a question that has been posed for over half a year):

1. A Thing:tm: is announced, occasionally at the same time as
2. The Thing:tm: is rolled out, optionally as an alpha or beta test
3. Bugs are discovered
4. ... only some of which are fixed (at best), resulting in anything from non-critical to outright breaking and destructive bugs lingering for anywhere from a few months to, more commonly years or never being fixed.
5. If the thing was rolled out as alpha or beta, it's then released to the general public in a broken state, with many of the reported bugs remaining; see again the editor and the wizard.

It doesn't really matter where you start at this point; start with one of the many, many highly upvoted bug reports or feature requests on meta, and you immediately build both some tentative confidence and trust that there is a path forward that doesn't result in yet another broken promise, and only minimal short-term betterment.