[#WEB-401] Assign Linden resources to maintaining the public JIRA

3. Second Life Website - WEB

Assign Linden resources to maintaining the public JIRA

Created: 27/Nov/07 03:59 AM Updated: 15/Oct/08 09:40 AM

Component/s:

jira.secondlife.com

Affects Version/s:

Not Versioned

Fix Version/s:

None

Last Triaged:	13/Oct/08 09:40 AM
Linden Lab Issue ID:	DEV-6664

Description

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The JIRA currently has well over 2,000 open issues listed.
This has multiple effects:
Because items are hard to find many duplicates are posted. An item with 20 votes is just as important as an item with 20 duplicates, but the later is harder to identify.
Developers are presumably wary of using the JIRA to find problems to resolve because of the sheer volume.
New users are wary of using the JIRA because of it's sheer scale.
Voting is ineffective while votes are cast across many related / duplicate issues and those votes are not transferred to issues once a duplicate is identified and linked.

Rather than suggest a new voting system or some reform of the JIRA that only it's creators can code. Assign more resources to maintaining the existing JIRA. If one person spent all day, every day identifying duplicates, closing non or out dated issues, creating and adding to meta issues and so on, the JIRA could be considerably compressed and be of much more use to both users and developers. That person would also be very well placed to suggest new categories or other improvements within the existing framework. The same person would also be an excellent point of contact within LL when trying to identify the current main issues.

This is something that in theory any user can do, but clearly in practise it isn't happening enough or with consistency. It's going to take some kind of paid allotted time to sift through and it seems wiser to have someone on the Linden side doing the linking and closing of related issues.

Note: Please link related issues rather than just close them without linking. It's important to see that 20 people opened the same kind of entry and adds weight when prioritising the main issues.

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Comments

Change History

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WarKirby Magojiro added a comment - 27/Nov/07 06:49 AM

When I close a duplicate, I generally link it.

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Mercia Mcmahon added a comment - 27/Nov/07 09:18 AM

I am not even sure this needs to be a full-time position, maybe it would be to tidy JIRA up, but after the initial work is done it would be case of checking on new issues and then following internal LL policy guidelines as to whether or not an issue requires following up.

Note on your note: only Lindens or the author should close an issue, and even Lindens usually resolve back to the author (I admit to closing issues that are very definite duplicates, but I am trying to quit). Related issues should never be resolved or closed; either its a duplicate or it stays open. Related issues should be handled via a Meta-Issue.

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Lex Neva added a comment - 27/Nov/07 10:46 AM

I think a lot of those 2000+ issues are from the dark ages that ended a few months back when we got email capability in this JIRA. I, for one, was loathe to resolve an issue that needed more information, because the author would never see that it needed to be reopened with more info unless they rabidly rechecked the issue (which most people don't do). I think a heck of a lot of issues are in dire need of being resolved as "Cannot reproduce", "Needs more information", or "Misfiled".

I'm in favor of LL assigning another worker bee to this. In the mean time, Fluf, if you are able to donate some time to this effort, every little bit of cleanup helps.

Note on Mercia's note on your note: I agree that "close" should be reserved for the original issue reporter or LL. I think that "resolve" should be used more judiciously though, perhaps with comments reminding people that resolving an issue is intended as an implicit assignment back to the reporter for more work, as per this: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Issue_tracker

Most people don't realize that. I didn't for the first few months I was on this JIRA.

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Torley Linden added a comment - 30/Nov/07 05:34 AM

Thanks for bringing this up, Rob Linden also imported this for further internal investigation.

Some context: I've spent a lot of time on PJIRA, sometimes going for 3-4 hrs. a day in doing misc. cleanup. (Details here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Torley_Linden/PJIRA ) But from the times where I wished I could spend more time but couldn't (due to much other work), I'd surely welcome more Linden & Resident help. I'm amazed and thankful at how active some of you have been here.

I can relate very strongly to some of the points you bring up: for example, there are a lot of "Fixed Internally" issues that should be "Fixed". You may've noticed Alexa and I were combing through the stale statuses, but we sure could use any Resident help to properly resolve those. Like Lex said, "every little bit of cleanup helps"; this Issue Tracker is a world of microtasking.

I also wish that we could resolve duplicates and link in one fell swoop, instead of having to do two manual actions (which I've done dozens of times on this public and our internal JIRA). I know some people mean to link, but it's easy to forget because it's unintuitive. I wonder if Atlassian, makers of JIRA, is aware of a way. makes a note

I'm watching this because I care a lot about it.

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Lex Neva added a comment - 30/Nov/07 09:36 AM

I've wished for a link/resolve duplicate action as well. It's especially annoying on the days when JIRA is slow... because those actions take a total of 4 page views, each of which can take a minute.

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Rob Linden added a comment - 30/Nov/07 09:56 AM

"I also wish that we could resolve duplicates and link in one fell swoop, instead of having to do two manual actions (which I've done dozens of times on this public and our internal JIRA). I know some people mean to link, but it's easy to forget because it's unintuitive. I wonder if Atlassian, makers of JIRA, is aware of a way. makes a note "

Could someone file this as a feature request at Atlassian, and then put a link here?

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Gigs Taggart added a comment - 30/Nov/07 11:19 AM

http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-3758

It's been filed since 2004. Looks like Atlassian doesn't care.

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Fluf Fredriksson added a comment - 30/Nov/07 11:35 AM

Just a short note to add I didn't mean to belittle the work anyone does tidying up the JIRA as it is. I dread to think how messy it would be otherwise. I'm also embarrassed to admit that though I have linked the odd issue when I see one, I don't have hours available to spend actively looking for them.
And thanks for your attention to the issue Torley.

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Drew Dwi added a comment - 17/Jan/08 11:46 AM

There's an internal issue on this now, is there any timeframe on if we'll know if this is going to happen? I guess if new resources (hours/personell) arn't going to be put towards this, a way to see the status of internal linked items, ie (open/fix pending) anything to give feedback to "the masses".

If the message of trying to provide better customer service which Philip posted is the new push in 08 "We will shift from our historical focus on relentless feature innovation to put making and keeping happy customers first on our list of priorities." this should fit squarely in this goal, feedback feedback feedback

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Fluf Fredriksson added a comment - 17/Jan/08 01:59 PM

And just to add that if anything, the situation appears to me to be slowly getting worse over time. Partly no doubt as use of the pJIRA becomes used by more and more "casual" users. There's no way I can blame someone for being a JIRA noob, but a fair number of entries have descriptions and information so terse that they are basically non starters.

Is there any way to actually delete totally defunct entries rather than have them hanging around as "closed" for lord knows how long in the future?