I've been putting this off, but eventually I need to write an update about how I'm treating priority (the first part of what Bugzilla labels “Importance”) in the pile of bugs.
Based on the discussion on wikitech-l, we introduced a new default level for priority. All new bugs are initially labeled “Unprioritized”. One of my tasks each day is to look at the new bugs for the past 24 hours and set an initial priority for them. If you decided to set the priority on a bug, I'd appreciate a comment with your rationale when you set it. If you disagree with my priority, let me know. I don't have as much MW experience as others, so I can very easily be wrong.
I'll probably introduce milestones soon, but, until then, here is a rough idea of the meaning for each priority level:
Highest - needs to be fixed ASAP, a week at the most High - should be fixed within the next month Normal - should be fixed in this quarter, or by the next release Low - we should get to this within 6 months, or the release after next Lowest - This can be fixed, but we're not going to worry about it. Patches accepted.
In addition, bugs assigned “Highest” or “High” should have someone besides wikibugs-l assigned to them. I'll try not to assign more than one “Highest” bug to a developer.
For now, I'm only going to be assigning bugs to people who the WMF employees. If you're an experienced MW developer, though, and would like me to assign you some bugs, let me know what sort of things you'd be interested in taking care of and I'll at least put you as the CC on those bugs.
Now, there are currently 500+ bugs with a “Normal” priority. I don't think we're going to have all those fixed for 1.18, so one of the things I'm doing right now is going through the list and lowering the priority.
Finally, my role is not to allocate WMF developer's time. I'm going to work with their supervisors to make sure that the work I'm assigning to developers stands a reasonable chance of getting done. In fact, I may do this most often by assigning bugs to the EPMs instead of the developers themselves.
Let me know what you think,
Mark.
Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
I've been putting this off, but eventually I need to write an update about how I'm treating priority (the first part of what Bugzilla labels "Importance") in the pile of bugs.
There should be consistency between documentation and reality. If you're going to call it and treat it as "priority," it should be labeled "priority." There's no reason to create confusion here.
Other than that, your proposal looks fine. My main concern is that this system you've created is going to be ignored by others. What happens if someone is assigned a highest priority bug and it hasn't been fixed in three weeks, for example? When your biggest weapon is a threat to assign the bugs to an Engineering Program Manager, it's a rather silly situation. But we'll see how this goes. :-)
MZMcBride
Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
Finally, my role is not to allocate WMF developer's time. I'm going to work with their supervisors to make sure that the work I'm assigning to developers stands a reasonable chance of getting done. In fact, I may do this most often by assigning bugs to the EPMs instead of the developers themselves.
I really don't like the idea of assigning bugs to people who you know will not be resolving these bugs. I'm mentioning this in a subsequent e-mail as I just received some bugspam where someone has been assigned to a bug who I know will not be resolving it. While some level of bugspam is to be expected, changing the assignee on a bug to someone who's only going to have to reassign it to the proper person is a silly step that creates noise without any signal.
A better solution would be to e-mail these people directly with bug links and ask them to assign the bugs properly or make lists on a wiki page/EtherPad/wherever.
MZMcBride
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org