[wp-hackers] Re: Unanswered tickets

[spencerp]

Jacob wrote:
> spencerp wrote:
>> Stephen Rider wrote:
>>> I think resolving it is the point.  If it's such a slam dunk, why is 
>>> it still in Trac?  (Okay, I see that it was just resolved _today_ 
>>> which kind of makes the point of having drawn attention to it.)
>> Exactly. And if I remember correctly... someone, I think it was 
>> Ryan... asked people on here what they thought should be "high 
>> priority" tickets or tickets that people would like to see get more 
>> attention... And what better to knock out first, than the simpler 
>> tickets... Especially with an Admin redesign coming soon, you can 
>> only touch so much tickets without interfering with it.. I know I 
>> pointed out SOME tickets that were pending on the Admin redesign... 
>> but they were also planned for 2.4 though, as well as the Admin 
>> redesign stuff...
>>
>>> At the least, things should be marked "Ain't gonna", "Obsolete", 
>>> "Waiting for TinyMCE update", or whatever.  Right now many of them 
>>> are "Waiting for Godot" -- hanging in limbo -- which gives the 
>>> people volunteering their efforts the impression that they're 
>>> efforts are ignored, which is not good for the future of WordPress.
>>>
>>> I've had a particular patch in for months now.  It would be nice to 
>>> see _some_ indication of whether anybody is even considering it.  
>>> Obviously it's not all going to be decided a day after submission, 
>>> but six months later there ought to be _something_.
>>>
>>> I do not mean to insult any of the "higher ups" at WordPress.  
>>> Obviously there are a _ton_ of bugs submitted, and a lot of patches, 
>>> and it's a lot to slog through.  But when somebody takes the time to 
>>> write a patch, somebody, somewhere, should give some feedback -- 
>>> yes, this might be used/no it's crap/it needs work/whatever.
>> I agree with this as well. I was going to say more, but I have to 
>> leave for work. Hopefully things workout here soon. There's so much 
>> backlog of tickets in Trac now that it's not funny...sigh. Aight.. 
>> I'm off for work..
>
> Sorry for the late introduction into this discussion, but I feel 
> somewhat differently about tickets. I agree with you, with more than 
> one point, my personal opinion on tickets is that you have to show 
> each one some love. However, the main problem is that I feel that the 
> reporter should show the ticket love too. You can't just give birth to 
> this ticket and wander off. If the details aren't clear enough then 
> the specs will never be sorted out and the ticket isn't worth taking 
> the time to write for. I do agree that if you don't know better than 
> it probably isn't a good idea to close a ticket out. I've left tickets 
> open that I thought should be closed because I didn't feel it was 
> within my right and expertise to know whether the ticket should be 
> closed.

I agree with you totally on this. I've seen that happen more than once 
too. People go there, drop a ticket and take off... Then everyone else 
is left scratching their heads... I admit, I can't really say much 
though because I rarely have the time to go there to Trac to help or 
whatever sigh. I haven't been having all this wonderful internet time 
like I had before and it sucks. Cause I really miss helping out on the 
forums, Trac, and where ever else...

But when I find/have the time...I try and do it full force while I'm 
here and can... The whole deal with people dropping tickets and running 
is a sad shame, because it doesn't help anyone at all. The original 
ticket submitter jets off... then the others have to figure out how or 
what to do with "it". Most times those tickets just sit there, which 
doesn't help a thing.

I've only submitted a few tickets in my day, and they were basically 
easy ones because I'm not a PHP coder. Hence for me not doing up more 
patches for tickets.. I'd love to PHP code and help create patches and 
etc, but I just don't have that knowledge currently because of lack of 
time to learn the PHP code... =( But yeah, the tickets need more TLC. 
And not just from the rest of the users that come across it, but from 
the original ticket submitters as well.

> At least that is how I would feel if I had my own open source project, 
> but I'm pretty sure that with 500+ tickets, limited time, and various 
> degrees of I-really-don't-care-for-that-ticket that project might fall 
> into the same state.

That's basically why I suggested this earlier:
http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2007-December/016738.html

Sure, it's a task in itself... Means they'd have to hack/edit Trac 
software itself to do what needs to be done. But, at least the tickets 
wouldn't constantly be bumping from version to version or whatever 
else.. The tickets would SIT THERE in the "TICKET BIN", assigned to 
their respected Milestone Bins. They wouldn't need to go any where 
UNLESS the ones with "SVN Commit Rights" MOVES them to the Milestone 
it's intended for...

So when looking at the RoadMap page there... there wouldn't be 500+ 
tickets sitting under Milestone 2.4... There'd only be what was sent 
there from bin.. that the SVN Committers moved there from "Ticket Bin". 
This would help alot too, for like.. setting a certain amount of tickets 
to be applied to that Milestone for under a certain Release Date 
schedule. So you don't have to constantly bump tickets from like: 2.4 to 
2.5 then those same tickets get bumped from 2.5 to 2.6 or whatever...

All those (uncertain with what to do with) type tickets can remain in 
the Ticket Bin, out of the way, and be there to be able to decide on 
it's destination later. And if need be, and they think it would be best 
in another version bin.. they could just move it from 2.4 milestone bin 
to the next one...

> I don't particularly agree with your assertion that the more complex 
> tickets should be committed before the simple ones. You can most 
> likely knock out 10 simple tickets in the time it would take to write 
> and argue the points for a more complex one. Take the cookie 
> authentication change. It took weeks to finish that and it is still 
> open for opinion/discussion, which I think is a good thing. I think 
> security is extremely important, but you can't hold back everything.

Unless I used the wrong wording, I basically said it would be better to 
knock out simpler tickets when "you" can... =P Especially when waiting 
around on whether the Admin Redesign is coming in or not... While the 
"wait" is there for the BIG stuff... they my as well knock out or squash 
the simple stuff quick... I wrote this in previous email: "And what 
better to knock out first, than the simpler tickets... Especially with 
an Admin redesign coming soon, you can only touch so much tickets 
without interfering with it.. I know I pointed out SOME tickets that 
were pending on the Admin redesign... but they were also planned for 2.4 
though, as well as the Admin redesign stuff... "


> Eh, I've written a couple of patches (#4779 for example, few others 
> probably) that may never see the light of day. At least not without a 
> lot of debate (which hasn't started yet). For those that haven't had 
> their patches committed, then I suppose you really need to explain why 
> your patches should be committed. That is basically had I did it. I 
> suppose and bitching a lot, it helps sometimes to bitch about tickets.

Yeah. And it's a sad shame that something like this one is taking 
forever to figure out what to do with it too..
http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4754

It's like.. "Uh, make up the mind people... It's not that hard to figure 
out what's the best wording/grammar usage to use for a logout message... 
" Take the suggestion that gets more +1 votes and commit it to core, 
close and go to next one... "oh boy, we're down to 542 tickets from 543 
a few minutes ago..LOL!" At least it's one less to worry about.. ;) :D I 
think most of the time they choose to let the simple ones linger till 
last minute.. just to get at "us"... :P lmao...

> Open source in general, developers show love towards a problem that 
> woos them. I mean, sometimes that love doesn't last and the developer 
> finds a new ticket that looks prettier. I know that out of your list, 
> I'll never touch the comments nor admin sections nor the i18n tickets. 
> They just aren't sexy enough.
That's true too. And I wouldn't touch those tickets either, other than 
to maybe comment on them and give my suggestions, opinions, and such.. I 
guess, just in my eyes they SEEM simple enough. And or, ones that 
shouldn't take but a quick decision of what to do with them... Commit 
it, Finish it, or Forget it (delete it)...

> So I mean, I've gained a lot of respect for a lot of people this past 
> week and good job all you damn sexy testers/ticket reviewers/devs!

=D