I guess we’ve got a catch 22 then, Ken. If I had found GW more useful and was using it, I may have frequented the forum more often and seen that. I’m looking back more than a few months and can’t find anything about a survey. Do you have a link? I’d like to see what was asked and even results if possible.
I’m willing to bet the majority of your users rarely visit this forum, if ever. How many check out GW and moved on because of this (rhetorical as we can’t know). How many participated years ago and left when GW didn’t meet their needs - (again rhetorical). Marketing often considers one voiced opinion to represent many that don’t voice their similar ones.
You might try something like:
“I can see this feature is very important to some of our users. I regret that these voices have been ignored or minimized for so long. I will bring this request to the attention of our developers and encourage that it be given serious consideration. I will post the plan after this discussion within the next couple of weeks.”
That f/u post could say: Yes we will implement this feature. No, we do not plan to implement this feature because ______. We will keep it under consideration until we _______.
At least the first two responses can be final and let us make a decision about GW. The third one would probably just keep things in suspense as you have replied favorably about prospects for this in the past then seemed to let it go.