Ideas versus implementation

Ideas versus implementation

The complexity all comes in if you want to serve your users well (which boudewijn & co seem to, as doing so has led to Krita's success). For me €10 towards a feature I'd like is not a sacrifice, €100 might need discussion with my family, while €1,000 or more would need some form of return on investment to allow me to justify the spend. Further, I'm already a C++ developer, and I've some experience of Qt; thus, for simple features, I can do it myself in a reasonable amount of time, and complex features are "just" a matter of me wanting to put enough time in.

In contrast, an up-and-coming artist might have to decide to skip a meal or three to save up €10 for a feature; more than that involves skipping more meals. They don't have the programming skills (and developing good enough skills to be a useful Krita contributor would take away from developing their art skills that they're passionate about), so they can't easily put in the time and effort that way. Yet, because (unlike me), they're trying to make their living from their art skills, their insight into what would make Krita more productive is a lot more valuable than mine.

Hence this being a hard problem - how do you ensure that the high value contributions from people without much money (yet) are rated above those of rich dilettantes?