In bugzilla's last years we've had a field "whiteboard", used for personal notes. You could just edit the task description to add your own keywords at the bottom. For broader classifications, there's nothing wrong about tracking tasks. Nemo

Another option may be a 'Search-Quality' project or some such with associatedd board. We could create columns for each category and drop them where they belong. The problem here though might be that some things sanely fit into two categories, but a workboard can only have them in one place. On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 8:11 AM, Trey Jones <tjones(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

… Well, if you us a big enough font, you could reach the moon. 7,000,000,000 pt HelveticaNeue Extended, maybe. For autocomplete, what about sticking with a department/team/issue format: e.g., Discovery-Search-BadWeight.. or they could all get a personal "_Tag" prefix: _Tag-dcausse-search-badweight. That's super unwieldy, but avoids autocomplete collisions for everything else. However, it sounds like we could consider ignoring the "no tracking tasks" directive, at least within Discovery. (Now I am advocating going against the advice given since no one seems to be advocating for it.) Trey Jones Software Engineer, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 3:57 PM, Kevin Smith &lt;ksmith(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: > Thanks for raising this issue, David. > > Tags are restricted because internally they are projects. Project (and > thus tag) namespace is global, so if everyone were to create 3 tags, then > if we laid them all end-to-end, they would stretch halfway to the moon[1]. > > My understanding about the history of tracking tasks is that they were > parent tasks, like epics, but with no concept of being "done". Something > like "Improve documentation" could have children come and go, but would > persist potentially forever. A project (or tag) would be better. > > I don't understand "Creating new tracking tasks (tasks that > 'automatically' get resolved when all its dependency tasks are resolved) in > Phabricator is discouraged", because that almost describes epics or other > parent tasks. Those are a good thing, and should not be discouraged. Except > for the "automatically get resolved" part, but if epics did automatically > resolve, I don't think that would be a bad thing. > > Using columns within a categorization project would be an option. And a > less-cumbersome option now than it would have been earlier this year, > because phabricator now allows you to change a task's column within a > workboard by setting a dropdown. (You always used to have to drag-and-drop > them). > > You could just insert a known string, like [Bad weighting] in the titles > of tasks related to that type of issue. Searching would work, as long as > you chose strings without accidental collisions. And as long as you were > very careful to never misspell one of your keywords. > > Please continue the discussion! > > > > > Kevin Smith > Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation > > > On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Erik Bernhardson < > ebernhardson(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: > >> Another option may be a 'Search-Quality' project or some such with >> associatedd board. We could create columns for each category and drop them >> where they belong. The problem here though might be that some things sanely >> fit into two categories, but a workboard can only have them in one place. >> >> On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 8:11 AM, Trey Jones &lt;tjones(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: >> >>> For broader classifications, there's nothing wrong about tracking tasks. >>> >>> >>> I agree in theory, but I'm trying not to advocate against standard >>> practice in the developer community. The first link I sent states "In >>> Phabricator, it would be better to create a Project (tag) to categorize >>> this type of work", and the entire sentence (!) is linked to the other >>> page, which states: >>> >>> Creating *new* tracking tasks (tasks that "automatically" get resolved >>>> when all its dependency tasks are resolved) in Phabricator is discouraged. >>>> It is recommended to create a project >>>> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Creating_and_renaming_projects> >>>> instead. >>> >>> >>> So it seems that someone somewhere doesn't like tracking tasks. Neither >>> discussion page shed any light. >>> >>> The whiteboard sounds very nice. I found this ticket >>> <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T64374> from about 2 years ago, and >>> the idea of "personal tags" or something else similar to the Bugzilla >>> whiteboard for Phabricator was discussed very, very briefly and the ticket >>> declined and closed. >>> >>> >>> Trey Jones >>> Software Engineer, Discovery >>> Wikimedia Foundation >>> >>> On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 10:51 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) < >>> nemowiki(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: >>> >>>> In bugzilla's last years we've had a field "whiteboard", used for >>>> personal notes. You could just edit the task description to add your own >>>> keywords at the bottom. For broader classifications, there's nothing wrong >>>> about tracking tasks. >>>> >>>> Nemo >>>> >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> discovery mailing list >>>> discovery(a)lists.wikimedia.org >>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/discovery >>>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> discovery mailing list >>> discovery(a)lists.wikimedia.org >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/discovery >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> discovery mailing list >> discovery(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/discovery >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > discovery mailing list > discovery(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/discovery > >

Now we're back to why David doesn't particularly like that: If the categories are ones you come back to again and again, the parent task would only have to be created once. And I could imagine a grandparent task of "Fix Search Stuff" which would make it easy to find the right parent task. Trey Jones Software Engineer, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 4:52 PM, Kevin Smith &lt;ksmith(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote:

Chase Pettet, 07/07/2016 23:07: Yes, this is the reason some dislike the tracking tasks; not a problem if you create reports for, say, 12 different classes of actionable search problems and add a handful blockers for each. (A contributing factor was that Phabricator's support for dependencies between tasks is awful: hard to add, no flexibility in notifications, no charts, no searchability. Tracking tasks were very powerful in bugzilla, not so much in Phabricator.) Nemo

Another option for personal categorization: 'flags' - it's the phabricator equivalent of bookmarks. Flags are personal, not shared publicly. A bit more info about flags is at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T102812 On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 8:14 AM, David Causse &lt;dcausse(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote:

Hi! Thanks, I didn't even know it existed! -- Stas Malyshev smalyshev(a)wikimedia.org