Hello all,
Here’s some news from the review we’re currently running about our *support
process*. Our goal is to understand how the current processes to report
bugs and feature requests work for you, and how we could improve them. You
can read more about the project on this page
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Contact_the_development_team/Process_review_2020>
.
Thanks a lot to everyone who gave feedback or answered our survey. We
collected 23 anonymous answers on the survey, and 5 people gave feedback on
the talk page or on the social media channels. The majority of the survey
respondents (87%) already reported a bug report or a feature request, the
most used platform being Phabricator (42%), followed by WD:Contact the
development team
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Contact_the_development_team>
and WD:Project
chat <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat>.
Asked to think of an example report or feature request that they made in
the last 2 years that generally represents their overall opinion of
interacting with the Wikidata development team, people mentioned a long
delay of response, issues taking too long to be fixed, problems with
tagging the report on Phabricator or difficulty to get in touch with people
who could solve the issue. Overall, the *lack of response or delay in the
response* seems to be the main pain points encountered by the respondents.
People were asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 how satisfied they are with
the current process, and the results are pretty polarized: one third of the
respondents declared being very satisfied, one third declared being not
satisfied at all. Some respondents mentioned that they couldn’t get an
answer before pinging people several times. Some people declared that they
had a positive experience and the issue they reported was solved quickly.
Respondents were asked about improvements they thought could be made to the
existing bug report/feature request process. The *main suggestions* revolve
around:
- Having a better/clearer overview of the open bugs and already reported
issues
- Improving the way tasks are triaged and monitored, as well as the
creation of Phabricator tickets
- Being able to suggest and vote for the most important features and
bugs to fix
- The possibility of communicating in other languages than English
On the positive side, some respondents declared that the existing process
works well for them, and a few people mentioned Phabricator being
functional as a bug tracking system. People highlighted the importance of
an on-wiki channel to report problems.
Respondents who never made a feature request or report a bug before in the
last two years had varied reasons for not doing so. 50% said that they
expected someone else to do it, 16% said they did not know how to report a
problem, while the rest of the respondents said that they didn’t encounter
the need.
Thanks again to people who took some time to answer the survey. Our next
steps are to work on some concrete suggestions to improve the process, and
to come back to you so we can discuss how to implement them.
If you have any questions or more suggestions, feel free to add them on this
talk page
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat#Wrap_up_of_the_feedback_about_bug_reports_and_feature_requests>.
Cheers,
Léa & Mohammed
--
Léa Lacroix
Community Engagement Coordinator
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.