What do the rating values mean?

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For every bug or suggestion submitted in the PFC, you are required to vote. How do you decide if an issue is a 1 or a 5? Does a 3 rating for a suggestion mean the same thing as a 3 for a bug? Here's the concensus internally on what the ratings should indicate:

Rating

Bugs

 

Rating

Suggestions

1

This is a trivial or cosmetic bug and it doesn’t keep me from using the product or my application.

 

1

Implementing this suggestion would negatively impact the product and my experience. Please do not implement it.

2

This is a bug is a minor annoyance that doesn’t cause serious problems.

 

2

I’m neutral, implementing this feature would not improve the product nor benefit me in anyway but it wouldn’t affect me negatively either.

3

This bug affects functionality but there’s an acceptable workaround.

 

3

This is a good idea, this feature would moderately improve my experience.

4

This bug has a significant impact on using the product or my application.

 

4

Adding this feature would provide a significant positive impact on the product, my productivity, or my application.

5

This bug is blocking me from using the product or preventing my application from working as I need it to. It should absolutely be fixed.

 

5

This is a must-have feature and Microsoft should absolutely implement it soon. Without this feature I am blocked in key use scenarios.

Many customers have suggested that we adjust the rating system to be -1 to 4 as opposed to 1 to 5. I think this is not necessary if we define the each rating value as we've done above (in fact we could use A, B, C, D, E as the rating scale if we all agree on what each value means).

So as a PFC user, is this how do you decide how to vote on an issue. Is it close to what you see above?

Marie Hagman

Program Manager

Visual Studio