I've been putting this off, but eventually I need to write an update
about how I'm treating priority (the first part of what Bugzilla labels
“Importance”) in the pile of bugs.
Based on the discussion on wikitech-l, we introduced a new default level
for priority. All new bugs are initially labeled “Unprioritized”. One
of my tasks each day is to look at the new bugs for the past 24 hours
and set an initial priority for them. If you decided to set the
priority on a bug, I'd appreciate a comment with your rationale when you
set it. If you disagree with my priority, let me know. I don't have as
much MW experience as others, so I can very easily be wrong.
I'll probably introduce milestones soon, but, until then, here is a
rough idea of the meaning for each priority level:
Highest - needs to be fixed ASAP, a week at the most
High - should be fixed within the next month
Normal - should be fixed in this quarter, or by the next release
Low - we should get to this within 6 months, or the release
after next
Lowest - This can be fixed, but we're not going to worry about it.
Patches accepted.
In addition, bugs assigned “Highest” or “High” should have someone
besides wikibugs-l assigned to them. I'll try not to assign more than
one “Highest” bug to a developer.
For now, I'm only going to be assigning bugs to people who the WMF
employees. If you're an experienced MW developer, though, and would
like me to assign you some bugs, let me know what sort of things you'd
be interested in taking care of and I'll at least put you as the CC on
those bugs.
Now, there are currently 500+ bugs with a “Normal” priority. I don't
think we're going to have all those fixed for 1.18, so one of the things
I'm doing right now is going through the list and lowering the
priority.
Finally, my role is not to allocate WMF developer's time. I'm going to
work with their supervisors to make sure that the work I'm assigning to
developers stands a reasonable chance of getting done. In fact, I may
do this most often by assigning bugs to the EPMs instead of the
developers themselves.
Let me know what you think,
Mark.