VSCode Feature requesting voting on GitHub does not work

[shoulders]

There are a lot of good feature requests that never get the 20 votes within 60 days for the following reasons:

• 60 days is not long enough for people to naturally (on their own volition) find these features.
• not everyone expects voting in GitHub, the system is not very clear. Maybe Microsoft should develop a proper and clear voting system.
• people use different emojis which leads to vote spreading. i.e. 20 👍 are better than 10 ❤️ and 10 🥇
• Users do not always upvote on the first post and this probably looses votes.
• These feature requests automatically close but should have a way to re-open if they get enough votes

some possible solutions

• increase time to vote to 180 days
• email all users on the vscode GitHub repo about a new feature request. This would allow proper scrutiny of a new feature.

Any thoughts?

NB: I am not bitter some of my excellent suggestions were automatically closed 😄

Some shared views here:

• Extension developers are in a minority when voting is used to triage VS Code issues #287

[oldregime]

This is a common frustration in the VS Code feature voting system! Here are some thoughts on the challenges you have identified:

Current limitations:

• The 60-day window is indeed short for organic discovery
• Vote spreading across different reaction emojis (👍 vs ❤️ vs 🎉) does dilute the count
• Only reactions on the first post are counted toward the threshold

Some workarounds the community uses:

• Share feature requests on social media, Reddit (r/vscode), or the VS Code Discord to drive visibility
• Link related feature requests together in comments to consolidate discussion
• Search for existing similar requests before creating new ones to avoid fragmentation

Regarding your suggestions:

• Increasing the voting period to 180 days could help, but would also increase the maintenance burden on triage
• Emailing all repo subscribers would create significant noise for the 100k+ watchers

The best approach is often to create a well-documented feature request with clear use cases, screenshots/mockups if applicable, and then actively share it with the community during that 60-day window.

You might also consider discussing your ideas in this discussions forum first to gauge interest before formally filing a feature request!

[shoulders]

Increasing the voting period to 180 days could help, but would also increase the maintenance burden on triage

Maintenance would not increase as it is all handled by bots.

Emailing all repo subscribers would create significant noise for the 100k+ watchers

Allow people to opt-in or opt-out. This is the only way to promote features. Reddit, Stackoverflow are not good places anymore. The internet is too diluted.