Dropping the 'LATER' resolution in Bugzilla

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Diederik van Liere

29 Nov 2011 29 Nov '11

7:45 p.m.

Hi folks, Currently, we have a 'LATER' resolution in Bugzilla, it contains 339 bug reports over all the products, see: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&list_i… The question is, when is LATER? Technically, these bugs are not open and so nobody will ever see them again and that's how they will be forgotten. To me, it seems that bugs that are labeled LATER should either be labeled: 1) WONTFIX, which I guess is the majority of these bugs 2) WORKSFORME, I am sure some things have been fixed 3) NEW, it is a real bug / feature request. So why not do a mass change from LATER to NEW, and give them a fresh pair of eyes? and remove the LATER option from Bugzilla. Best, Diederik

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Chad

29 Nov 29 Nov

7:59 p.m.

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Diederik van Liere <dvanliere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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LATER means we can't or won't do it (right now) but that is likely to change in the future. WONTFIX implies "no and this is not likely to change" WORKSFORME is unrelated. -Chad

Diederik van Liere

8:02 p.m.

...

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Diederik van Liere <dvanliere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks, Currently, we have a 'LATER' resolution in Bugzilla, it contains 339 bug reports over all the products, see:

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&list_i…

The question is, when is LATER? Technically, these bugs are not open and

nobody will ever see them again and that's how they will be forgotten. To me, it seems that bugs that are labeled LATER should either be

labeled:

1) WONTFIX, which I guess is the majority of these bugs 2) WORKSFORME, I am sure some things have been fixed 3) NEW, it is a real bug / feature request.

LATER means we can't or won't do it (right now) but that is likely to change in the future. WONTFIX implies "no and this is not likely to change" WORKSFORME is unrelated. -Chad _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

-- <a href="http://about.me/diederik">Check out my about.me profile!</a>

Chad

8:11 p.m.

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 2:02 PM, Diederik van Liere <dvanliere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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But then the bug should be NEW, nobody is checking for a bug that is marked LATER. I mentioned WORKSFORME because i suspect that some of the LATER bugs have been resolved by now. Diederik

If there's some that are LATER and should be WONTFIX or WORKSFORME, we can change them. Changing them all to NEW is a bad idea though, and I think LATER has a purpose so we shouldn't get rid of it. -Chad

Sumana Harihareswara

8:17 p.m.

If you suspect that a bug has been fixed or is now invalid, then ask that question in the bug. But I agree that "later" really ought not to be a resolution (because really a bug marked LATER has not been resolved), but rather a status or prioritization. When I do searches across all the open bugs, I do not habitually say "and also ones that are Resolved but only if they've been marked Resolved--Later". And probably most people are making the same omission. Mark H., what do you think? Also, is there a way to make Bugzilla's default search include resolved bugs with the Later resolution? -- Sumana Harihareswara Volunteer Development Coordinator Wikimedia Foundation On 11/29/2011 02:02 PM, Diederik van Liere wrote:

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But then the bug should be NEW, nobody is checking for a bug that is marked LATER. I mentioned WORKSFORME because i suspect that some of the LATER bugs have been resolved by now. Diederik On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:59 PM, Chad <innocentkiller(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Diederik van Liere <dvanliere(a)gmail.com> > wrote: >> Hi folks, >> >> Currently, we have a 'LATER' resolution in Bugzilla, it contains 339 bug >> reports over all the products, see: >> >> > https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&list_i… >> >> The question is, when is LATER? Technically, these bugs are not open and > so >> nobody will ever see them again and that's how they will be forgotten. >> >> To me, it seems that bugs that are labeled LATER should either be > labeled: >> 1) WONTFIX, which I guess is the majority of these bugs >> 2) WORKSFORME, I am sure some things have been fixed >> 3) NEW, it is a real bug / feature request. >> > > LATER means we can't or won't do it (right now) but that is > likely to change in the future. WONTFIX implies "no and this > is not likely to change" > > WORKSFORME is unrelated. > > -Chad > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Chad

8:23 p.m.

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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Yes. Went ahead and did this now to include dupes too. -Chad

mhershberger＠wikimedia.org

30 Nov 30 Nov

1:52 a.m.

Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah(a)wikimedia.org> writes:

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Mark H., what do you think?

Since I'm usually thinking about priority of bugs, I'm not sure why I would resolve a bug LATER rather setting its priority to LOWEST. But since I tend not to look at RESOLVED bugs or anything below NORMAL priority, I don't think we need to get rid of LATER, either. Of course, I'm reflecting only on Bugzilla's usefulness to me. LATER doesn't get in the way of my day-to-day work, so I have no opinion on it. Mark.

Daniel Friesen

29 Nov 29 Nov

8:43 p.m.

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:45:23 -0800, Diederik van Liere <dvanliere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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This -> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18082 Is not really WONTFIX, nor FIXED, nor WORKSFORME... and do you really want it marked as an open bug when it won't be implemented at all for ages until browsers actually have feature support that would make it possible to implement? Sounds like a bad way to make our list of open bugs grow in a needless way and cloud up real bug reports we can and want to fix, with bug reports that won't be fixable for quite awhile due to external sources. -- ~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name]

Thomas Dalton

8:56 p.m.

On 29 November 2011 19:43, Daniel Friesen <lists(a)nadir-seen-fire.com> wrote:

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The reason WONTFIX, FIXED and WORKSFORME don't make sense is because that isn't a bug, it's an enhancement request. Perhaps the solution is to not include enhancements in the list of bugs by default. It's natural that enhancement requests will sometimes sit around for ages before they get implemented, that doesn't mean we should mark them as resolved when they aren't.

Daniel Friesen

9:47 p.m.

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 11:56:53 -0800, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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On 29 November 2011 19:43, Daniel Friesen <lists(a)nadir-seen-fire.com> wrote:

No. We have plenty of enhancement requests that don't fit into WONTFIX, FIXED, WORKSFORME, or LATER. And we don't want to make those disappear, those are valid bugs to keep open. The reason why WONTFIX, FIXED, and WORKSFORME doesn't fit that bug is because it's dependent on external systems implementing functionality in order for us to be able to implement the feature. Hence, LATER when they are implemented. -- ~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name]

Merlijn van Deen

8:53 p.m.

On 29 November 2011 19:45, Diederik van Liere <dvanliere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

The question is, when is LATER? Technically, these bugs are not open and so nobody will ever see them again and that's how they will be forgotten.

Chad

9:01 p.m.

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Merlijn van Deen <valhallasw(a)arctus.nl> wrote:

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On 29 November 2011 19:45, Diederik van Liere <dvanliere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

The question is, when is LATER? Technically, these bugs are not open and so nobody will ever see them again and that's how they will be forgotten.

Reviewed perhaps, but not necessarily marked back to NEW unless we actually plan to take action on it. -Chad

Brion Vibber

9:09 p.m.

I'm going to take a little of my review time today and go over the LATER bugs looking for anything that needs closing or reopening. -- brion

Diederik van Liere

9:09 p.m.

I agree, currently the LATER acts as a blackhole and there is no structured process to re-evaluate these kind of bugs. I have done a lot of reading of these bugs and many were filed 3 to 5 years ago, I think it's better to say WONTFIX then to suggest that this is something that is going to be fixed. It is about expectation management :) On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Merlijn van Deen <valhallasw(a)arctus.nl>wrote;wrote:

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On 29 November 2011 19:45, Diederik van Liere <dvanliere(a)gmail.com> wrote:

The question is, when is LATER? Technically, these bugs are not open and

nobody will ever see them again and that's how they will be forgotten.

I would interpret 'LATER' as 'this bug should be re-evaluated after a certain period of time'. Following this train of thought, a LATER bug should have a re-evaluation date planned, after which it is changed back to NEW. This probably is not possible, but I think it makes sense to change LATER bugs to NEW after, say, a year or so. Merlijn _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

-- <a href="http://about.me/diederik">Check out my about.me profile!</a>

Jay Ashworth

10 p.m.

----- Original Message -----

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From: "Diederik van Liere" <dvanliere(a)gmail.com>

...

The question is, when is LATER? Technically, these bugs are not open and so nobody will ever see them again and that's how they will be forgotten.

I would assume that "LATER" is, in a release after this one... and that the proper solution is to do as you suggest (stripe them back to NEW) *after the next release is cut*. Anyone think that's a bad idea? Do we have a "Target release" in our BZ? Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra(a)baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274

Dan Collins

10:52 p.m.

I'm noticing that a lot of the RESO LATE bugs are requests for extensions or site requests which either: 1) We aren't currently installing that extension (Ok for these to be RESO LATE) 2) The original requester needs to provide further information Do we want that second category to be resolved later? If so, we're going to be waiting a long time for people to come back with more details. Should bugs that are resolved later because the original requester or someone else needs to provide more info instead be closed invalid, or something else? -- Dan Collins On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 4:00 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com> wrote:

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----- Original Message -----

From: "Diederik van Liere" <dvanliere(a)gmail.com>

The question is, when is LATER? Technically, these bugs are not open and so nobody will ever see them again and that's how they will be forgotten.

Jay Ashworth

30 Nov 30 Nov

1:33 a.m.

----- Original Message -----

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From: "Dan Collins" <en.wp.st47(a)gmail.com> Do we want that second category to be resolved later? If so, we're going to be waiting a long time for people to come back with more details. Should bugs that are resolved later because the original requester or someone else needs to provide more info instead be closed invalid, or something else?

Isn't there a CLOSED MOREINFO? Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra(a)baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274

Brion Vibber

1:47 a.m.

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 4:33 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com> wrote:

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----- Original Message -----

Isn't there a CLOSED MOREINFO?

It's possible to enable a NEEDINFO or similar status, but it's custom when it exists. -- brion

mhershberger＠wikimedia.org

1:56 a.m.

Jay Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com> writes:

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Do we have a "Target release" in our BZ?

We've begun using Milestones in Bugzilla for this. One of the milestones is "Mysterious Future". I think you should feel free to use that instead of LATER. Mark.

Jay Ashworth

2:35 a.m.

----- Original Message -----

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From: "Mark A. Hershberger" <mhershberger(a)wikimedia.org>

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Jay Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com> writes:

Do we have a "Target release" in our BZ?

We've begun using Milestones in Bugzilla for this. One of the milestones is "Mysterious Future". I think you should feel free to use that instead of LATER.

Diederik van Liere

3:56 a.m.

So today I have read about a 100 LATER marked bug reports and I do think we need the LATER resolution, but I would suggest to limit it's use case to only those bugs were an external constituent, either the Wikipedia community or a third-party software developer, needs to take an action and *then* we need to actually follow up on that. So this would, IMHO, exclude the following type of bug reports: 1) We do not currently have enough resources (is not a good reason to label it LATER) 2) A bug that is dependent on another bug (is not a good reason to label it LATER) 3) Bug reports that only dependent on upstream but do not require any action after it has been fixed should not be labeled LATER I am not sure how to handle bug reports that require a major architectural overhaul, not a big fan of LATER but not quite sure if there is a better alternative. Best, Diederik On 2011-11-29, at 8:35 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:

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----- Original Message -----

From: "Mark A. Hershberger" <mhershberger(a)wikimedia.org>

Jay Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com> writes:

Do we have a "Target release" in our BZ?

We've begun using Milestones in Bugzilla for this. One of the milestones is "Mysterious Future". I think you should feel free to use that instead of LATER.

I love this, and am promptly stealing it for my own. -- j -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra(a)baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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participants (10)

Brion Vibber
Chad
Dan Collins
Daniel Friesen
Diederik van Liere
Jay Ashworth
Merlijn van Deen
mhershberger＠wikimedia.org
Sumana Harihareswara
Thomas Dalton