Bug Triage: Call for Action (and a meeting)

[Paul W. Frields]

On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 14:50 -0700, John Poelstra wrote:
> Greetings Bug Triagers,
> 
> Thanks to those of you that came to the bug triage session at FUDCon a 
> couple of Saturdays back.  Hopefully it was helpful and you'd still like 
> to join us.  Things have gotten slightly better here 
> http://tinyurl.com/4cavl2 but we still need your help!
> 
> Our weekly bug triage meeting hasn't happened for several weeks and we'd 
> like to resume them again.  Some of us were tied up with other things 
> and some people were unable to make the time.  Also after having a few 
> meetings with one or two people it seemed unclear how best to proceed.
> 
> So.... we know there are a lot of people interested in bug triage but 
> past meeting attendance hasn't been  good so we'd like to try and fix 
> that.  At least two or three people sign up for the 'fedorabugs' group 
> every day so there is a disconnect there somewhere we need to fix.  And 
> if you think weekly meetings aren't the way to go and there is a better 
> way to proceed please put it forward.

I wonder -- do you think that having evening meetings might help?  To
know whether it would matter, we might want to find out how many people
who want to triage don't show up because they can't find time during the
work day.  Our experience in the Docs Project was that weeknights were
generally good, and weekends were decidedly bad.

> ITEM #1
> I've created a matrix on this page 
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings/Scheduler to help 
> figure out a good time for people.  PLEASE add your IRC nick or initials 
> to the best slots that work for you.
> 
> I'm hoping we can gather together a core group of people that will meet 
> each week to talk about bug triage, ways to improve process, and tools 
> to make it easier.
> 
> ITEM #2
> I've raised this idea a couple of times now (and generally been shot 
> down), but since there has been little to no uptake in recent triage 
> related post I'm going to keep trying :)  We made the decision back in 
> January to keep triage stuff on fedora-test-list because we wanted the 
> benefit of a larger audience of people that might be interested in 
> helping with bug triage.  HOWEVER, I'm wondering if the "testing" 
> audience and that "triage" audience really aren't the same and as a 
> result we are directing new bug triage folks to sign up for 
> fedora-test-list where they receive 200 emails a week where only a small 
> handful of them are related to bug triage.
> 
> Would there be better response to "bug triage related posts" if they 
> were sent to a bug triage list only, and thus a very targeted audience 
> of people interested in bug triage?

There was a general move to clean up lists a while ago because there
were too many, and people didn't understand the difference between them.
That's not to say this idea doesn't have merit!  Do you think separating
the lists has any possible drawbacks when it comes to something like
generating test cases from bugs that have been triaged?

> ITEM #3
> It is completely possible that items #1 and #2 are completely 
> misdirected and that instead we should do ______________(you tell us). 
> I'm simply writing this message because somehow we need to find a way to 
> gather a core group of people around bug triage who can consistently 
> work on bug triage, collaborate, and make Fedora better together by 
> making sure our package maintainers have good bug reports to work with. 
>   In doing so I believe we can encourage others to join in too.

I am really interested in trying some triage on the side.  I've never
quite been able to suss out how to do it right, but I am trying to move
out of some old stomping grounds and into new ones for my side work, so
I will get on the matrix too, FWIW.

-- 
Paul W. Frields
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
  http://paul.frields.org/   -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
  irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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