On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 1:58 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com> wrote:
On Mon, Nov
14, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com>
wrote:
And sometimes, that means assigning general responsiblity about that
issue to one specific person. Do we have that person?
Depends on the issue. Are you asking about a particular one from this
thread? (i18n/l10n issues should probably start by being assigned to
Siebrand Mazeland if there's no specific candidate you know of
offhand.)
No, I meant more "one specific person whose situational awareness scope
specifically includes the collective status of tickets, software or
operations" (probably one of each, depending on the size of the problem).
As a general escalation path one should start with the bugmeister (that's
hexmode / Mark Hershberger), whose job it is to prioritize issues and
distribute them to folks who can work on them. Since figuring out just
which part of what goes where sometimes is much easier with more historical
context, old-timers like me can also help direct these to the right people
(or be the right person).
Don't be afraid of being unsure who to send it to at first; we're much more
likely to *get* it to the right person if the communication channels are
open, even if our first response is a "what the heck is this????". :)
An example of a site JS issue; just today I wandered across <
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32366> which on inspection
turned out to be a continuance of an earlier incompatibility between site
JS on
als.wikipedia.org and the newer, jQuery-oriented MediaWiki front-end
code <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29595>.
One developer had made an attempt at helping out and fixing the site JS
back in July, but it turned out to be an incomplete fix and caused
additional scripts to break, so got reverted by the locals (as the things
it broke were more important than the things it fixed).
That thread of conversation unfortunately dropped off, and the rest of the
fixes didn't get completed in July...
The followup bug in November got a slightly snippy initial reply from the
first person to check it out, but since it came back on the radar I was
able to pull up the earlier fixes and figure out what was wrong (additional
scripts didn't get updated to match the new MediaWiki:Common.js) and fix
them -- it seems to now be resolved.
So that shows us doing some things right (investigating and helping out
with the site JS problems when a problem shows up, especially in concert
with changes to MediaWiki itself such as jQuery coming in) and some things
wrong (an in-progress fix & test cycle got disrupted and wasn't continued
for a few months; some sub-ideal responses).
-- brion