It’s quite the experience

Two things. First, some economists study stated versus revealed preferences. [1] The idea is to figure out what people do rather than what they say they will do.

Second, in the case of people making feature requests, it could be a net-societal-gain [2] if feature requesters made some kind of binding commitment. (See also the hold-up problem [3].) Perhaps a potential customer would commit to "if/when feature X gets added, I will commit to using the product for 2 hours." or "... I will spend $10 on the associated cloud services." (The question of what happens if the customer reneges also has to be agreed upon up front.)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference

[2]: known as social welfare (not to be confused with welfare programs -- this is the neoclassical economic framework after all!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_welfare_function

[3]: this paper discusses the hold-up problem in the context of vaccine investment and development: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28168/w281...

To be honest, I wrote this comment off on first glance for some reason. (I need to do better)

This is actually super interesting. Thank you so much for sharing.

Sure. Do you have anything in mind for using it somehow?