I do, I just wanted to make sure you knew that some people like that feature a whole lot. :)

Honestly by the time something gets added to the backlog I feel like it should be because a decision was made. I think a backlog is the tool to capture decisions that have been made, not making the decisions.

Having to search through the discussion to see what the requirements are supposed would seem messy to me. If a tool was provided for discussion of stories I'd want it to be something outside of the backlog itself.

We've been "working around" not being able to have the stories in an independent order by coloring the items we want for the next sprint yellow. But I don't think I would want stories independent of themes. The theme ordering is helpful in that it allows us to make sure we've gone through the themes in order of most important themes first, so that we don't forget to grab at least one story from the biggies.

I know other companies may prefer to organize them in other ways...We have a backlog per product, not project. This means that we have a huge number of themes, as in when sorting my list of themes scrolls. Maybe others have one per project so the long list view would be meaningful, but for us the long list option would just be messy. I can't imagine dragging and dropping individual stories to set the priority every time. The more I think about it, the more I like the theme ordering.

This may also be partially about how themes are organized. We have multiple themes per functional area. Quiz Refactor Phase 1 and 2 for instance. That way the refactor can have multiple priorities on the list, based on the two groups of stories.

Just my two cents, and some different ways to use the software that may help answer the pain.

I like it, just please don't make it difficult to not use the fibonacci sequence. My team doesn't like it and I don't want force them into it.