I think I can provide some context here, because this really seems to be about something specific. The Reading Infrastructure team recently inherited maintenance responsibility for the Wikimedia maps stack, resourced on a very limited basis. Along with that, we inherited a backlog of many hundreds of tasks, many of which have seen no activity for years. For the past couple of months, a few of us have spent an hour each week trying to work through the backlog trying to triage all of these. In the course of these grooming meetings, we have closed more than a few tasks based on a combination of not having the resources to work on them, and it not seeming likely that anyone else will, either; the theory here is that it can better reflect reality to openly decline a task than to let it languish in a backlog indefinitely.
If this contravenes the relevant norms, I apologize. If you were upset by the closing of what you believe to be a valid maps ticket, please feel free to reopen. Thanks.
On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 10:06 PM Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
Declined = WONTFIX (e.g. if some talented developer wrote a patch, and the patch was perfect, you would still -2 it because the functionality is not wanted/stupid/etc)
Invalid = not a real bug. That should include things like spam, stuff where the reporter is mistaken ( can't reproduce or if someone say reports a sharepoint bug)
I think the defining difference is its possible to write a patch for a declined bug, even though it would be rejected, where an invalid bug by definition is unfixable.
Just my 2 cents, others may have different definitions.
-- Brian
p.s. ive never liked the "need volunteer" term for lowest priority - I have always felt it had offensive implications as if volunteer time isnt as important so they get the low priority bugs.
On Tuesday, October 2, 2018, Joe Matazzoni jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org wrote:
I agree with Amir’s understanding. "Declined” is basically for ideas
whose proper timing is never. Valid ideas that we just aren’t going to work on any time soon should go in a backlog or freezer or some such, where they can await until some future project or other development makes them relevant (at least theoretically).
All of which does raise a slightly different question: I am much less
clear on what the exact difference is between “Invalid” and “Declined.” Thoughts?
Best, Joe _____________________
Joe Matazzoni Product Manager, Collaboration Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco mobile 202.744.7910 jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge."
On Oct 2, 2018, at 9:31 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
Hi,
I sometimes see WMF developers and product managers marking tasks as "Declined" with comments such as these:
- "No resources for it in (team name)"
- "We won't have the resources to work on this anytime soon."
- "I do not plan to work on this any time soon."
Can we perhaps agree that the "Declined" status shouldn't be used like
this?
"Declined" should be valid when:
- The component is no longer maintained (this is often done as
mass-declining).
- A product manager, a developer, or any other sensible stakeholder
thinks
that doing the task as proposed is a bad idea. There are also variants
of
this:
- The person who filed the tasks misunderstood what the software
component
is supposed to do and had wrong expectations.
- The person who filed the tasks identified a real problem, but another
task proposes a better solution.
It's quite possible that some people will disagree with the decision to mark a particular task as "Declined", but the reasons above are
legitimate
explanations.
However, if the task suggests a valid idea, but the reason for declining
is
that a team or a person doesn't plan to work on it because of lack of resources or different near-term priorities, it's quite problematic to
mark
it as Declined.
It's possible to reopen tasks, of course, but nevertheless "Declined"
gives
a somewhat permanent feeling, and may cause good ideas to get lost.
So can we perhaps decide that such tasks should just remain Open? Maybe with a Lowest priority, maybe in something like a "Freezer" or "Long
term"
or "Volunteer needed" column on a project workboard, but nevertheless
Open?
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l