Back in October 2014 when it launched the Windows Insider program, Microsoft promised the way forward for Windows could be entirely decided by users, who have been invited to sign up in the development of the operating-system by testing preview builds, sending feedback, and sharing their suggestions.

To streamline the connection between the company and users, Microsoft launched the Insider Hub for Windows Insiders, an application whose purpose was to allow testers to send feedback inside a more effective manner.

The app eventually became the Feedback Hub in May 2016, just ahead of the debut from the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, with Microsoft also opening it to everyone.

Starting with this transformation, pretty much anyone running Windows 10 can send feedback to the company while using Feedback Hub.

Needless to say, Microsoft has insisted for Windows 10 users to always turn to the Feedback Hub whenever they had a break through for that operating system or they came across something they deemed must be improved. Whether or not Microsoft used this feedback to improve Windows 10 is something that's totally debatable, but on the other hand, there have been times when the organization actually made people believe reporting bugs was just a waste of time.

In 2018, Microsoft launched the Windows 10 October 2018 Update with a glitch that caused removing files kept in libraries. While this wasn't an extensive problem, it forced Microsoft to pull the feature update completely, simply to be discovered that several users reported it within the Feedback Hub months before the go-ahead was given.

So technically, users told Microsoft about this issue, that the organization missed it.

Recently, users learned that the Feedback Hub has become the home of political trolls and spammers, with a few of the posts being there for over a month. For whatever reason, nobody at Microsoft removed these abusive posts, so that as you can see within the screenshot here, the Feedback Hub can barely be considered a platform for sharing feedback at this time.

Given all of these, the criticism against Microsoft and the way it handles feedback is gaining traction. Does Microsoft even worry about feedback? This is the question that a lot of users ask nowadays, obviously with no answer that may convince them sending feedback continues to be well worth the effort.

As the Feedback Hub seems a flop, I think Microsoft can continue to save it. And here are the 3 changes the company should implement as quickly as possible to prioritize high-quality submissions:

Introduce an upvote/downvote feature for feedback. The Feedback Hub already allows users to upvote certain ideas, but on the other hand, downvoting isn't possible. A reddit-like approach will make it easier for high-quality submissions to become prioritized, while things like spam and redundant posts would just disappear considerably faster.

Hire a dedicated team to keep things organized. Removing spam and posts that don't make sense at all, grouping submissions in collections, and overall taking care of the Feedback Hub much like it takes place on an online community is one thing which should take place in this app too. The Feedback Hub is just too important for the future of Windows to depart spam inside for Thirty days without anyone caring about it.

Share more information about what's happening with the feedback. Every submission (or collection) should get a response in the dev team, and Microsoft should clearly indicate what it's working on and just what it intends to do with the feedback in the long term. An example of methods this could work is the Waze feedback forum (hosted on UserVoice), in which the Google-owned team marks submissions with a series of tags like planned, within the works, or released. Microsoft is applying exactly the same platform for many of their products, including OneDrive.

After the day, the Feedback Hub isn't whatsoever an awful idea, it's just poorly implemented and barely taken care of. Using the right improvements, it may end up being the app that can allow users to bring about the introduction of Windows, much like Microsoft promised in the first place. Of course, if the company really likes you feedback.