Wikimedia Phabricator tasks have a "Priority" dropdown field (which is
not consistently used) with several discrete values, among them
"Lowest". See [1] for the full list of Priority field values.
Since [2], "Low" and "Lowest" priority share the same definition.
I propose to disable setting the "Lowest" Priority value in Phab tasks.
"Lowest priority" can sound demotivating / disrespectful ("there is
nothing that could be even less important"). However, bikeshedding
about changing the name of the value would ignore further observations:
* About half of the people who are most active in setting initial
Priority values do not ever set Priority to "Lowest"[3].
* There is no significant difference between median age of open tasks
with Low and with Lowest priority[4], thus nothing seems to get
realistically differentiated here.
* Personally I also assume Lowest priority is sometimes used instead
of honestly declining a task (means: "this is not a good idea"[5]).
But of course that is rather hard to prove.
If you have opinions and/or ideas how to interpret data differently,
please add them to
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T228759 to keep
them in a single place - either as a text comment, or via "Award Token"
to express support or disagreement without adding words.
Thanks,
andre
[1]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Project_management#Priority_leve…
[2]
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T317533
[3]
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T228759#6988320
[4]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/…
[5]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_management/Bug_report_life_cycle
--
Andre Klapper (he/him) | Bugwrangler / Developer Advocate
https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/