[Foundation-l] Does anyone else think bugzilla is a complete failure

[Brion Vibber]

Birgitte SB wrote:
> The subject line pretty much sums this note up.  I am
> frustrated with the continued lack of development
> support for anything where the propents are not
> actually developers themselves.

The purpose of the bug tracker is to do two things:

* Ensure that bug reports and feature requests are in a central, searchable
place where they will be seen and not be lost

* Ensure that there is at least some tracking of completion of issues.

As long as those are happening (and they are), then Bugzilla is *not* a failure.
If you don't believe me, look in MediaWiki's RELEASE-NOTES file and read the bug
numbers of the fixed/implemented issues per major release.

Please keep in mind what the bug tracking system replaces: a series of dozens of
wiki pages on a dozen separate wikis containing requests and complaints, which
weren't read by anyone and from which things would disappear never to be seen again.


Now, just because someone (or even several people) have requested something
doesn't mean it'll get done, any more than having several people write a letter
to a congressman or send a petition to a corporation will mean that the
government or company will do that thing.

In addition to someone, somewhere wanting it, it also has to fit with the
interests and priorities of the group that would actually effect it.

Some "neat features" may simply have no priority to the group that does the work
and runs the operations of the site. Manpower is limited, and effort goes, in
rough order, to:
1) Things that are really, really important to keep the site running
2) Things that someone writing code things are useful and/or neat

Some bugs are either very difficult to fix or have small enough effects that
someone has to decide to put in the effort to track it down and may not consider
it worth doing immediately.

>  I have aware for
> sometime that asking for anything without uploading a
> "patch" is absolutely useless.

This is false, but I realize it's easy to feel that way if your own request is
not being fulfilled. Take a peak at the thousands of other requests, and you may
notice that there are other things to do.

> I have recently realized many of developments which
> have never happened *did* have attachments (which I
> think are "patches").  The bugzilla system really must
> be broken.  Because how can these things just be
> ignored for so long?

1) Patches have to be looked at, understood, and accepted. As with pieces of
legislation "suggested" by a lobbyist group, legislators might want to take a
look at it before they vote on it.

Some patches are not good code. Some patches would damage the system or destroy
the performance of the entire site if they were simply installed.

Other times it's simply not known whether the feature *is actually desirable*.
Just because someone, somewhere wants it, even if the code *works*, it isn't
necessarily something that *should* be added.

Review may be a community or political issue as well as looking at actual code.


>  Here is the bug which had the
> most effort invested in it from WS.
> 
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4375  

This is "protected sections".

As I recall there is open debate about whether this is a desirable feature and,
if so, whether it should be implemented as in that code.

I don't recall anyone pushing for it in many months, though, so I assume there
is no longer any interest in it?

> There are other technical issues that have projects on
> WS at a standstill.  
> 
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=189

This is very low priority as there seems to be little active interest in it and
it requires a security review of third-party code which is reputed to be unsafe.
(If that's changed, we'd like to hear about it.)

> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5881

There is open debate about how this should work and what it should look like.
I've agreed in principal that we should be able to do something for this for
Wikisource but there is as far as I know no one currently attempting to reach
agreement on implementation.

Without this, having some disputed code doesn't actually mean anything will get
done.

If you're very interested, please keep bugging me about these things.

> I ask people online.   Bugs are filed.  Nothing
> happens.  I do not want to make the effort to get all
> sub-domains to show support for these new features
> when it will have no effect.  I realize that the
> developers are volunteers and are able to chose what
> interests them and where they would like to work.

Many developers are volunteers, but two of us are employed by the Foundation.
Primarily this means we have an extra commitment to site operations issues --
performance, security, etc -- but also it means we should pay more attention to
some of the Foundation's smaller sites.

Since there's a lot to do, it helps to make waves on specific issues to make
sure attention gets paid.

Foundation-L probably isn't the best place to do it, but whatever works. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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