There might be a way to upvote a feature without the need to post something in that thread. Popularity may not be the highest priority to implement but is an indication what the community thinks is missing the most while testing the mod

I've been pondering it, same as I was pondering the discussion forum idea, i'm not sure it would really be productive tho.

Would be meant as feedback for you, not sure about discussion area. unless you feel to close the MCF thread or just ignore it in future :P

yeah, but I can just see it being use as an argument agienst my logic ; "This Feature has 90000 up votes! - Y U NO ADD!!??!" type of thing. The MCF is 90% "OMG I Place cable and it crashed!" the idea for the discussion area would be a more interesting place where people could talk about solving, and automating things that arn't bugs; but IRC pretty much shot the idea down saying it would end horribly.

For what its worth I like the forum idea. Its nice to have a place to consolidate people and discussions. I actually came to this site looking for just that. They can get out of hand, but just pick one or two good mods, set simple rules, and enforce them, also for back-end I recommend PHPbb, easy to setup and admin in my experience. Setup can get a bit confusing, so pick a mod that knows your system. If it were me, I would totally do it, the ones I have run in the past have been great.

Jirai uses an additional priority system and milestone system. Even with many upvotes if its set to low priority and put into a milestone, people dont ask as much but by doing so they know you have read it and aknowledged its usefulness (at that point of time). Mostly they ask why it is not put into an earlier milestone or higher priority though

At the end of the day, its up to you what you add and don't, i personally like the idea of a vote up system, if you explain why a feature wont be implemented and people still post "y u no add", either ignore or ban/temporary ban them. Make it one of the rules. I think it would provide a little more feedback

"don't fix something that isn't broken" -some wise guy there is no need for a voting system! this mod was given to the community, and the community gives ideas back. It's the developer(s)'s job to judge the ideas, with some moderation of course. all that will happen is that the community will be angry that the "most faved" isn't done first, and tell developer(s) what the community wants.