Mailing List Archive

Pe mar?i, 2 octombrie 2018, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>
a scris:

> Hi,
>
> I sometimes see WMF developers and product managers marking tasks as
> "Declined" with comments such as these:
> * "No resources for it in (team name)"
> * "We won't have the resources to work on this anytime soon."
> * "I do not plan to work on this any time soon."
>
> Can we perhaps agree that the "Declined" status shouldn't be used like
> this?
>
> "Declined" should be valid when:
> * The component is no longer maintained (this is often done as
> mass-declining).
> * A product manager, a developer, or any other sensible stakeholder thinks
> that doing the task as proposed is a bad idea. There are also variants of
> this:
> * The person who filed the tasks misunderstood what the software component
> is supposed to do and had wrong expectations.
> * The person who filed the tasks identified a real problem, but another
> task proposes a better solution.
>
> It's quite possible that some people will disagree with the decision to
> mark a particular task as "Declined", but the reasons above are legitimate
> explanations.
>
> However, if the task suggests a valid idea, but the reason for declining is
> that a team or a person doesn't plan to work on it because of lack of
> resources or different near-term priorities, it's quite problematic to mark
> it as Declined.
>
> It's possible to reopen tasks, of course, but nevertheless "Declined" gives
> a somewhat permanent feeling, and may cause good ideas to get lost.
>
> So can we perhaps decide that such tasks should just remain Open? Maybe
> with a Lowest priority, maybe in something like a "Freezer" or "Long term"
> or "Volunteer needed" column on a project workboard, but nevertheless Open?


Yes, please!

I usually reopen such tasks, but it is a little weird.

Strainu

>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · ?????? ????????? ??????????
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ?“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
_______________________________________________
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https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

I agree, tasks should not be declined in such a way when tagged with
component(s).

On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 at 17:31, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I sometimes see WMF developers and product managers marking tasks as
> "Declined" with comments such as these:
> * "No resources for it in (team name)"
> * "We won't have the resources to work on this anytime soon."
> * "I do not plan to work on this any time soon."
>
> Can we perhaps agree that the "Declined" status shouldn't be used like
> this?
>
> "Declined" should be valid when:
> * The component is no longer maintained (this is often done as
> mass-declining).
> * A product manager, a developer, or any other sensible stakeholder thinks
> that doing the task as proposed is a bad idea. There are also variants of
> this:
> * The person who filed the tasks misunderstood what the software component
> is supposed to do and had wrong expectations.
> * The person who filed the tasks identified a real problem, but another
> task proposes a better solution.
>
> It's quite possible that some people will disagree with the decision to
> mark a particular task as "Declined", but the reasons above are legitimate
> explanations.
>
> However, if the task suggests a valid idea, but the reason for declining is
> that a team or a person doesn't plan to work on it because of lack of
> resources or different near-term priorities, it's quite problematic to mark
> it as Declined.
>
> It's possible to reopen tasks, of course, but nevertheless "Declined" gives
> a somewhat permanent feeling, and may cause good ideas to get lost.
>
> So can we perhaps decide that such tasks should just remain Open? Maybe
> with a Lowest priority, maybe in something like a "Freezer" or "Long term"
> or "Volunteer needed" column on a project workboard, but nevertheless Open?
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · ?????? ????????? ??????????
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ?“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Declined tasks also usually do not appear in any searches by volunteers looking for tasks, which would be sad as the original reason for declining may be "no resources", declining the task effectively makes it impossible for these resources to find it, usually.

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Wikitech-l <wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org> Im Auftrag von Amir E. Aharoni
Gesendet: Dienstag, 2. Oktober 2018 18:31
An: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Betreff: [Wikitech-l] problematic use of "Declined" in Phabricator

Hi,

I sometimes see WMF developers and product managers marking tasks as "Declined" with comments such as these:
* "No resources for it in (team name)"
* "We won't have the resources to work on this anytime soon."
* "I do not plan to work on this any time soon."

Can we perhaps agree that the "Declined" status shouldn't be used like this?

"Declined" should be valid when:
* The component is no longer maintained (this is often done as mass-declining).
* A product manager, a developer, or any other sensible stakeholder thinks that doing the task as proposed is a bad idea. There are also variants of
this:
* The person who filed the tasks misunderstood what the software component is supposed to do and had wrong expectations.
* The person who filed the tasks identified a real problem, but another task proposes a better solution.

It's quite possible that some people will disagree with the decision to mark a particular task as "Declined", but the reasons above are legitimate explanations.

However, if the task suggests a valid idea, but the reason for declining is that a team or a person doesn't plan to work on it because of lack of resources or different near-term priorities, it's quite problematic to mark it as Declined.

It's possible to reopen tasks, of course, but nevertheless "Declined" gives a somewhat permanent feeling, and may cause good ideas to get lost.

So can we perhaps decide that such tasks should just remain Open? Maybe with a Lowest priority, maybe in something like a "Freezer" or "Long term"
or "Volunteer needed" column on a project workboard, but nevertheless Open?

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · ?????? ????????? ?????????? http://aharoni.wordpress.com ?“We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore? _______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


_______________________________________________
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I agree with Amir’s understanding. "Declined” is basically for ideas whose proper timing is never. Valid ideas that we just aren’t going to work on any time soon should go in a backlog or freezer or some such, where they can await until some future project or other development makes them relevant (at least theoretically).

All of which does raise a slightly different question: I am much less clear on what the exact difference is between “Invalid” and “Declined.” Thoughts?

Best,
Joe
_____________________

Joe Matazzoni
Product Manager, Collaboration
Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco
mobile 202.744.7910
jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org

"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge."




> On Oct 2, 2018, at 9:31 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I sometimes see WMF developers and product managers marking tasks as
> "Declined" with comments such as these:
> * "No resources for it in (team name)"
> * "We won't have the resources to work on this anytime soon."
> * "I do not plan to work on this any time soon."
>
> Can we perhaps agree that the "Declined" status shouldn't be used like this?
>
> "Declined" should be valid when:
> * The component is no longer maintained (this is often done as
> mass-declining).
> * A product manager, a developer, or any other sensible stakeholder thinks
> that doing the task as proposed is a bad idea. There are also variants of
> this:
> * The person who filed the tasks misunderstood what the software component
> is supposed to do and had wrong expectations.
> * The person who filed the tasks identified a real problem, but another
> task proposes a better solution.
>
> It's quite possible that some people will disagree with the decision to
> mark a particular task as "Declined", but the reasons above are legitimate
> explanations.
>
> However, if the task suggests a valid idea, but the reason for declining is
> that a team or a person doesn't plan to work on it because of lack of
> resources or different near-term priorities, it's quite problematic to mark
> it as Declined.
>
> It's possible to reopen tasks, of course, but nevertheless "Declined" gives
> a somewhat permanent feeling, and may cause good ideas to get lost.
>
> So can we perhaps decide that such tasks should just remain Open? Maybe
> with a Lowest priority, maybe in something like a "Freezer" or "Long term"
> or "Volunteer needed" column on a project workboard, but nevertheless Open?
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · ?????? ????????? ??????????
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ?“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

I agree, which raises a question why so many map related legitimate used
requests were closed recently as declined, and with a comment that there is
no resources to work on them

On Tue, Oct 2, 2018, 17:51 Joe Matazzoni <jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> I agree with Amir’s understanding. "Declined” is basically for ideas whose
> proper timing is never. Valid ideas that we just aren’t going to work on
> any time soon should go in a backlog or freezer or some such, where they
> can await until some future project or other development makes them
> relevant (at least theoretically).
>
> All of which does raise a slightly different question: I am much less
> clear on what the exact difference is between “Invalid” and “Declined.”
> Thoughts?
>
> Best,
> Joe
> _____________________
>
> Joe Matazzoni
> Product Manager, Collaboration
> Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco
> mobile 202.744.7910
> jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org
>
> "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
> sum of all knowledge."
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 2, 2018, at 9:31 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <
> amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I sometimes see WMF developers and product managers marking tasks as
> > "Declined" with comments such as these:
> > * "No resources for it in (team name)"
> > * "We won't have the resources to work on this anytime soon."
> > * "I do not plan to work on this any time soon."
> >
> > Can we perhaps agree that the "Declined" status shouldn't be used like
> this?
> >
> > "Declined" should be valid when:
> > * The component is no longer maintained (this is often done as
> > mass-declining).
> > * A product manager, a developer, or any other sensible stakeholder
> thinks
> > that doing the task as proposed is a bad idea. There are also variants of
> > this:
> > * The person who filed the tasks misunderstood what the software
> component
> > is supposed to do and had wrong expectations.
> > * The person who filed the tasks identified a real problem, but another
> > task proposes a better solution.
> >
> > It's quite possible that some people will disagree with the decision to
> > mark a particular task as "Declined", but the reasons above are
> legitimate
> > explanations.
> >
> > However, if the task suggests a valid idea, but the reason for declining
> is
> > that a team or a person doesn't plan to work on it because of lack of
> > resources or different near-term priorities, it's quite problematic to
> mark
> > it as Declined.
> >
> > It's possible to reopen tasks, of course, but nevertheless "Declined"
> gives
> > a somewhat permanent feeling, and may cause good ideas to get lost.
> >
> > So can we perhaps decide that such tasks should just remain Open? Maybe
> > with a Lowest priority, maybe in something like a "Freezer" or "Long
> term"
> > or "Volunteer needed" column on a project workboard, but nevertheless
> Open?
> >
> > --
> > Amir Elisha Aharoni · ?????? ????????? ??????????
> > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> > ?“We're living in pieces,
> > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore?
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

+1 that we shouldn't close valid bugs.

Assuming nobody brings up objections, here's a nice place to document new
consensus:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_management/Bug_report_life_cycle

FWIW, that page is discoverable from:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Project_management#Closing_a_task

-Adam

On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 9:51 AM Joe Matazzoni <jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> I agree with Amir’s understanding. "Declined” is basically for ideas whose
> proper timing is never. Valid ideas that we just aren’t going to work on
> any time soon should go in a backlog or freezer or some such, where they
> can await until some future project or other development makes them
> relevant (at least theoretically).
>
> All of which does raise a slightly different question: I am much less
> clear on what the exact difference is between “Invalid” and “Declined.”
> Thoughts?
>
> Best,
> Joe
> _____________________
>
> Joe Matazzoni
> Product Manager, Collaboration
> Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco
> mobile 202.744.7910 <(202)%20744-7910>
> jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org
>
> "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
> sum of all knowledge."
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 2, 2018, at 9:31 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <
> amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I sometimes see WMF developers and product managers marking tasks as
> > "Declined" with comments such as these:
> > * "No resources for it in (team name)"
> > * "We won't have the resources to work on this anytime soon."
> > * "I do not plan to work on this any time soon."
> >
> > Can we perhaps agree that the "Declined" status shouldn't be used like
> this?
> >
> > "Declined" should be valid when:
> > * The component is no longer maintained (this is often done as
> > mass-declining).
> > * A product manager, a developer, or any other sensible stakeholder
> thinks
> > that doing the task as proposed is a bad idea. There are also variants of
> > this:
> > * The person who filed the tasks misunderstood what the software
> component
> > is supposed to do and had wrong expectations.
> > * The person who filed the tasks identified a real problem, but another
> > task proposes a better solution.
> >
> > It's quite possible that some people will disagree with the decision to
> > mark a particular task as "Declined", but the reasons above are
> legitimate
> > explanations.
> >
> > However, if the task suggests a valid idea, but the reason for declining
> is
> > that a team or a person doesn't plan to work on it because of lack of
> > resources or different near-term priorities, it's quite problematic to
> mark
> > it as Declined.
> >
> > It's possible to reopen tasks, of course, but nevertheless "Declined"
> gives
> > a somewhat permanent feeling, and may cause good ideas to get lost.
> >
> > So can we perhaps decide that such tasks should just remain Open? Maybe
> > with a Lowest priority, maybe in something like a "Freezer" or "Long
> term"
> > or "Volunteer needed" column on a project workboard, but nevertheless
> Open?
> >
> > --
> > Amir Elisha Aharoni · ?????? ????????? ??????????
> > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> > ?“We're living in pieces,
> > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore?
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

*nods* I think the root problem is that the phabricator task system does
double duty as both an *issue reporting system* for users and a *task
tracker* for devs.

An issue reporting system should capture all actual problems and all actual
suggestions, and is meant to provide visibility for the devs into the world
of users. A task tracker should capture only things that are, or are
planned to be, worked on and is a work planning tool for the devs.
Secondarily if open, the task tracker provides visibility for the users
into the world of devs.

This mixup of concerns is endemic in open source software development,
unfortunately, and leads to exactly the sorts of conflicts you mention.

One way to handle this in a mixed single tracker environment is to use a
state marker such as a backlog column in a workboard -- don't decline, move
it to the "backlog" or "someday" column. Another is to use separate project
tags for general issues and specific work efforts. Put it in the general
project for issues, copy it to the work project if it's being tracked in
your work group.

-- brion







On Tue, Oct 2, 2018, 9:31 AM Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I sometimes see WMF developers and product managers marking tasks as
> "Declined" with comments such as these:
> * "No resources for it in (team name)"
> * "We won't have the resources to work on this anytime soon."
> * "I do not plan to work on this any time soon."
>
> Can we perhaps agree that the "Declined" status shouldn't be used like
> this?
>
> "Declined" should be valid when:
> * The component is no longer maintained (this is often done as
> mass-declining).
> * A product manager, a developer, or any other sensible stakeholder thinks
> that doing the task as proposed is a bad idea. There are also variants of
> this:
> * The person who filed the tasks misunderstood what the software component
> is supposed to do and had wrong expectations.
> * The person who filed the tasks identified a real problem, but another
> task proposes a better solution.
>
> It's quite possible that some people will disagree with the decision to
> mark a particular task as "Declined", but the reasons above are legitimate
> explanations.
>
> However, if the task suggests a valid idea, but the reason for declining is
> that a team or a person doesn't plan to work on it because of lack of
> resources or different near-term priorities, it's quite problematic to mark
> it as Declined.
>
> It's possible to reopen tasks, of course, but nevertheless "Declined" gives
> a somewhat permanent feeling, and may cause good ideas to get lost.
>
> So can we perhaps decide that such tasks should just remain Open? Maybe
> with a Lowest priority, maybe in something like a "Freezer" or "Long term"
> or "Volunteer needed" column on a project workboard, but nevertheless Open?
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · ?????? ????????? ??????????
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ?“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Joe,

"Invalid" means something like "this is not a legitimate report; the user had mis-configured their browser". "Declined" means something like "We understand the user's request but we won't change the default font size based on the reasoning provided here."

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
-------- Original message --------From: Joe Matazzoni <jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org> Date: 10/2/18 9:51 AM (GMT-08:00) To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] problematic use of "Declined" in Phabricator
I agree with Amir’s understanding. "Declined” is basically for ideas whose proper timing is never.  Valid ideas that we just aren’t going to work on any time soon should go in a backlog or freezer or some such, where they can await until some future project or other development makes them relevant (at least theoretically).

All of which does raise a slightly different question: I am much less clear on what the exact difference is between “Invalid” and “Declined.” Thoughts?

Best,
Joe
_____________________

Joe Matazzoni
Product Manager, Collaboration
Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco
mobile 202.744.7910
jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org

"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge."




> On Oct 2, 2018, at 9:31 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I sometimes see WMF developers and product managers marking tasks as
> "Declined" with comments such as these:
> * "No resources for it in (team name)"
> * "We won't have the resources to work on this anytime soon."
> * "I do not plan to work on this any time soon."
>
> Can we perhaps agree that the "Declined" status shouldn't be used like this?
>
> "Declined" should be valid when:
> * The component is no longer maintained (this is often done as
> mass-declining).
> * A product manager, a developer, or any other sensible stakeholder thinks
> that doing the task as proposed is a bad idea. There are also variants of
> this:
> * The person who filed the tasks misunderstood what the software component
> is supposed to do and had wrong expectations.
> * The person who filed the tasks identified a real problem, but another
> task proposes a better solution.
>
> It's quite possible that some people will disagree with the decision to
> mark a particular task as "Declined", but the reasons above are legitimate
> explanations.
>
> However, if the task suggests a valid idea, but the reason for declining is
> that a team or a person doesn't plan to work on it because of lack of
> resources or different near-term priorities, it's quite problematic to mark
> it as Declined.
>
> It's possible to reopen tasks, of course, but nevertheless "Declined" gives
> a somewhat permanent feeling, and may cause good ideas to get lost.
>
> So can we perhaps decide that such tasks should just remain Open? Maybe
> with a Lowest priority, maybe in something like a "Freezer" or "Long term"
> or "Volunteer needed" column on a project workboard, but nevertheless Open?
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · ?????? ????????? ??????????
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ?“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Declined = WONTFIX (e.g. if some talented developer wrote a patch, and the
patch was perfect, you would still -2 it because the functionality is not
wanted/stupid/etc)

Invalid = not a real bug. That should include things like spam, stuff where
the reporter is mistaken ( can't reproduce or if someone say reports a
sharepoint bug)

I think the defining difference is its possible to write a patch for a
declined bug, even though it would be rejected, where an invalid bug by
definition is unfixable.

Just my 2 cents, others may have different definitions.

--
Brian

p.s. ive never liked the "need volunteer" term for lowest priority - I have
always felt it had offensive implications as if volunteer time isnt as
important so they get the low priority bugs.

On Tuesday, October 2, 2018, Joe Matazzoni <jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I agree with Amir’s understanding. "Declined” is basically for ideas
whose proper timing is never. Valid ideas that we just aren’t going to
work on any time soon should go in a backlog or freezer or some such, where
they can await until some future project or other development makes them
relevant (at least theoretically).
>
> All of which does raise a slightly different question: I am much less
clear on what the exact difference is between “Invalid” and “Declined.”
Thoughts?
>
> Best,
> Joe
> _____________________
>
> Joe Matazzoni
> Product Manager, Collaboration
> Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco
> mobile 202.744.7910
> jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org
>
> "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge."
>
>
>
>
>> On Oct 2, 2018, at 9:31 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>
wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I sometimes see WMF developers and product managers marking tasks as
>> "Declined" with comments such as these:
>> * "No resources for it in (team name)"
>> * "We won't have the resources to work on this anytime soon."
>> * "I do not plan to work on this any time soon."
>>
>> Can we perhaps agree that the "Declined" status shouldn't be used like
this?
>>
>> "Declined" should be valid when:
>> * The component is no longer maintained (this is often done as
>> mass-declining).
>> * A product manager, a developer, or any other sensible stakeholder
thinks
>> that doing the task as proposed is a bad idea. There are also variants of
>> this:
>> * The person who filed the tasks misunderstood what the software
component
>> is supposed to do and had wrong expectations.
>> * The person who filed the tasks identified a real problem, but another
>> task proposes a better solution.
>>
>> It's quite possible that some people will disagree with the decision to
>> mark a particular task as "Declined", but the reasons above are
legitimate
>> explanations.
>>
>> However, if the task suggests a valid idea, but the reason for declining
is
>> that a team or a person doesn't plan to work on it because of lack of
>> resources or different near-term priorities, it's quite problematic to
mark
>> it as Declined.
>>
>> It's possible to reopen tasks, of course, but nevertheless "Declined"
gives
>> a somewhat permanent feeling, and may cause good ideas to get lost.
>>
>> So can we perhaps decide that such tasks should just remain Open? Maybe
>> with a Lowest priority, maybe in something like a "Freezer" or "Long
term"
>> or "Volunteer needed" column on a project workboard, but nevertheless
Open?
>>
>> --
>> Amir Elisha Aharoni · ?????? ????????? ??????????
>> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>> ?“We're living in pieces,
>> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore?
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
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*very much agree with both Amir and Brion*

I've seen the same thing; something is reported as a more or less general
issue, it is then picked up as a task, it is further discussed in a
specific context, then closed because it does not fit the given context.
But the new context wasn't part of the reported issue, which is part of the
production system, it is part of some specific on-going development.
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I think I can provide some context here, because this really seems to be
about something specific. The Reading Infrastructure team recently
inherited maintenance responsibility for the Wikimedia maps stack,
resourced on a very limited basis. Along with that, we inherited a backlog
of many hundreds of tasks, many of which have seen no activity for years.
For the past couple of months, a few of us have spent an hour each week
trying to work through the backlog trying to triage all of these. In the
course of these grooming meetings, we have closed more than a few tasks
based on a combination of not having the resources to work on them, and it
not seeming likely that anyone else will, either; the theory here is that
it can better reflect reality to openly decline a task than to let it
languish in a backlog indefinitely.

If this contravenes the relevant norms, I apologize. If you were upset by
the closing of what you believe to be a valid maps ticket, please feel free
to reopen. Thanks.

On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 10:06 PM Brian Wolff <bawolff@gmail.com> wrote:

> Declined = WONTFIX (e.g. if some talented developer wrote a patch, and the
> patch was perfect, you would still -2 it because the functionality is not
> wanted/stupid/etc)
>
> Invalid = not a real bug. That should include things like spam, stuff where
> the reporter is mistaken ( can't reproduce or if someone say reports a
> sharepoint bug)
>
> I think the defining difference is its possible to write a patch for a
> declined bug, even though it would be rejected, where an invalid bug by
> definition is unfixable.
>
> Just my 2 cents, others may have different definitions.
>
> --
> Brian
>
> p.s. ive never liked the "need volunteer" term for lowest priority - I have
> always felt it had offensive implications as if volunteer time isnt as
> important so they get the low priority bugs.
>
> On Tuesday, October 2, 2018, Joe Matazzoni <jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
> > I agree with Amir’s understanding. "Declined” is basically for ideas
> whose proper timing is never. Valid ideas that we just aren’t going to
> work on any time soon should go in a backlog or freezer or some such, where
> they can await until some future project or other development makes them
> relevant (at least theoretically).
> >
> > All of which does raise a slightly different question: I am much less
> clear on what the exact difference is between “Invalid” and “Declined.”
> Thoughts?
> >
> > Best,
> > Joe
> > _____________________
> >
> > Joe Matazzoni
> > Product Manager, Collaboration
> > Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco
> > mobile 202.744.7910
> > jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org
> >
> > "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
> the sum of all knowledge."
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Oct 2, 2018, at 9:31 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <
> amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I sometimes see WMF developers and product managers marking tasks as
> >> "Declined" with comments such as these:
> >> * "No resources for it in (team name)"
> >> * "We won't have the resources to work on this anytime soon."
> >> * "I do not plan to work on this any time soon."
> >>
> >> Can we perhaps agree that the "Declined" status shouldn't be used like
> this?
> >>
> >> "Declined" should be valid when:
> >> * The component is no longer maintained (this is often done as
> >> mass-declining).
> >> * A product manager, a developer, or any other sensible stakeholder
> thinks
> >> that doing the task as proposed is a bad idea. There are also variants
> of
> >> this:
> >> * The person who filed the tasks misunderstood what the software
> component
> >> is supposed to do and had wrong expectations.
> >> * The person who filed the tasks identified a real problem, but another
> >> task proposes a better solution.
> >>
> >> It's quite possible that some people will disagree with the decision to
> >> mark a particular task as "Declined", but the reasons above are
> legitimate
> >> explanations.
> >>
> >> However, if the task suggests a valid idea, but the reason for declining
> is
> >> that a team or a person doesn't plan to work on it because of lack of
> >> resources or different near-term priorities, it's quite problematic to
> mark
> >> it as Declined.
> >>
> >> It's possible to reopen tasks, of course, but nevertheless "Declined"
> gives
> >> a somewhat permanent feeling, and may cause good ideas to get lost.
> >>
> >> So can we perhaps decide that such tasks should just remain Open? Maybe
> >> with a Lowest priority, maybe in something like a "Freezer" or "Long
> term"
> >> or "Volunteer needed" column on a project workboard, but nevertheless
> Open?
> >>
> >> --
> >> Amir Elisha Aharoni · ?????? ????????? ??????????
> >> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> >> ?“We're living in pieces,
> >> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore?
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Wikitech-l mailing list
> >> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> _______________________________________________
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Hi!

On 10/2/18 9:57 AM, Brion Vibber wrote:
> *nods* I think the root problem is that the phabricator task system does
> double duty as both an *issue reporting system* for users and a *task
> tracker* for devs.

This is probably the real root cause. But I don't think we are going to
make the split anytime soon, even if we wanted to (which is not
certain), and this mode of operation is very common in many organizations.

Realizing this, I think we need some mode of explicitly saying "we do
not have any means to do it now or in near-term future, but we don't
reject it completely and if we ever have resources or ways to do this,
we might revisit this".

We kinda sorta have this with "Stalled" status and "Need volunteer" tag,
but we might want to get this status more prominent and distinguish
"TODO" items outside of any planning cycle and the ones that are part of
the ongoing development. And document it in the lifecycle document.

--
Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@wikimedia.org

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Hi!

> All of which does raise a slightly different question: I am much less
> clear on what the exact difference is between “Invalid” and
> “Declined.” Thoughts?

I usually use Invalid where the description of the task does not really
describe the problem (or a problem) - e.g. it was a user error,
misconfiguration, misunderstanding about how it should have worked,
transient condition that has passed and we can not do anything about it,
something that is outside of realm of possibilities for us to do (e.g.
"fix copyright laws"), a task created by mistake, etc. For TODO tasks,
Invalid would be when the task is describing something that can not be
done at all (at least by us), or would not produce any desirable result.

Declined is when it describes a valid task in general, but we are not
going to do it because of reasons.
--
Stas Malyshev
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On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 11:32 AM Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> Realizing this, I think we need some mode of explicitly saying "we do
> not have any means to do it now or in near-term future, but we don't
> reject it completely and if we ever have resources or ways to do this,
> we might revisit this".
>
> We kinda sorta have this with "Stalled" status and "Need volunteer" tag,
> but we might want to get this status more prominent and distinguish
> "TODO" items outside of any planning cycle and the ones that are part of
> the ongoing development. And document it in the lifecycle document.
>

I have found that setting the priority to "lowest" is the closest thing we
have to "this is a valid task but we are not going to invest paid time into
it."

----
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Associate Product Manager
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I agree with this approach, and also with moving tasks to a "freezer". 

I support depreciating the use of "needs volunteer (developer)".

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
-------- Original message --------From: James Hare <jhare@wikimedia.org> Date: 10/2/18 11:41 AM (GMT-08:00) To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] problematic use of "Declined" in Phabricator
On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 11:32 AM Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> Realizing this, I think we need some mode of explicitly saying "we do
> not have any means to do it now or in near-term future, but we don't
> reject it completely and if we ever have resources or ways to do this,
> we might revisit this".
>
> We kinda sorta have this with "Stalled" status and "Need volunteer" tag,
> but we might want to get this status more prominent and distinguish
> "TODO" items outside of any planning cycle and the ones that are part of
> the ongoing development. And document it in the lifecycle document.
>

I have found that setting the priority to "lowest" is the closest thing we
have to "this is a valid task but we are not going to invest paid time into
it."

----
James Hare
Associate Product Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
https://wikimediafoundation.org
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We could also create a global tag called freezer / room101 (????) to help
developers to do this filtering. It would also allow us to get a high level
overview of under resourced projects which i suspect would be helpful with
planning and finding stewards for certain projects.

Without such a tag projects are forced to create their own
tags/milestones/columns to manage these tasks (my team has done just this)

On Tue, Oct 2, 2018, 12:05 PM Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree with this approach, and also with moving tasks to a "freezer".
>
> I support depreciating the use of "needs volunteer (developer)".
>
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> -------- Original message --------From: James Hare <jhare@wikimedia.org>
> Date: 10/2/18 11:41 AM (GMT-08:00) To: Wikimedia developers <
> wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] problematic use
> of "Declined" in Phabricator
> On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 11:32 AM Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Realizing this, I think we need some mode of explicitly saying "we do
> > not have any means to do it now or in near-term future, but we don't
> > reject it completely and if we ever have resources or ways to do this,
> > we might revisit this".
> >
> > We kinda sorta have this with "Stalled" status and "Need volunteer" tag,
> > but we might want to get this status more prominent and distinguish
> > "TODO" items outside of any planning cycle and the ones that are part of
> > the ongoing development. And document it in the lifecycle document.
> >
>
> I have found that setting the priority to "lowest" is the closest thing we
> have to "this is a valid task but we are not going to invest paid time into
> it."
>
> ----
> James Hare
> Associate Product Manager
> Wikimedia Foundation
> https://wikimediafoundation.org
> _______________________________________________
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> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> _______________________________________________
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> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
Jon Robson
twitter: @jdlrobson
linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorobson/
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I think we are misusing the term "priority" here. Priority for whom?
Setting something to "lowest" priority implies that users do not care about
the item. Unbreak now implies users need it fixed right away. "we have no
resources" does not mean its not needed, it just means WMF does not view it
as a priority, which might align, but frequently misalign with the user's
needs.

I suggest we use dashboard columns for the planning activities, while
keeping the tasks themselves fully under "requester's" control. E.g. let
the community decide what is more important, but use dashboards for team
work planning. This way, if a volunteer developer wants to contribute,
they would look for the highest-demanded bugs that don't have active status
in any teams.

On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 7:32 PM Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> Hi!
>
> On 10/2/18 9:57 AM, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > *nods* I think the root problem is that the phabricator task system does
> > double duty as both an *issue reporting system* for users and a *task
> > tracker* for devs.
>
> This is probably the real root cause. But I don't think we are going to
> make the split anytime soon, even if we wanted to (which is not
> certain), and this mode of operation is very common in many organizations.
>
> Realizing this, I think we need some mode of explicitly saying "we do
> not have any means to do it now or in near-term future, but we don't
> reject it completely and if we ever have resources or ways to do this,
> we might revisit this".
>
> We kinda sorta have this with "Stalled" status and "Need volunteer" tag,
> but we might want to get this status more prominent and distinguish
> "TODO" items outside of any planning cycle and the ones that are part of
> the ongoing development. And document it in the lifecycle document.
>
> --
> Stas Malyshev
> smalyshev@wikimedia.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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On Tue, 2018-10-02 at 17:05 +0000, Brian Wolff wrote:
> Declined = WONTFIX (e.g. if some talented developer wrote a patch, and the
> patch was perfect, you would still -2 it because the functionality is not
> wanted/stupid/etc)
>
> Invalid = not a real bug. That should include things like spam, stuff where
> the reporter is mistaken ( can't reproduce or if someone say reports a
> sharepoint bug)
>
> I think the defining difference is its possible to write a patch for a
> declined bug, even though it would be rejected, where an invalid bug by
> definition is unfixable.
>
> Just my 2 cents, others may have different definitions.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_management/Bug_report_life_cycle

andre
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On Tue, 2018-10-02 at 22:24 +0500, Michael Holloway wrote:
> I think I can provide some context here, because this really seems to be
> about something specific. The Reading Infrastructure team recently
> inherited maintenance responsibility for the Wikimedia maps stack,
> resourced on a very limited basis. Along with that, we inherited a backlog
> of many hundreds of tasks, many of which have seen no activity for years.
> For the past couple of months, a few of us have spent an hour each week
> trying to work through the backlog trying to triage all of these. In the
> course of these grooming meetings, we have closed more than a few tasks
> based on a combination of not having the resources to work on them, and it
> not seeming likely that anyone else will, either; the theory here is that
> it can better reflect reality to openly decline a task than to let it
> languish in a backlog indefinitely.
>
> If this contravenes the relevant norms, I apologize. If you were upset by
> the closing of what you believe to be a valid maps ticket, please feel free
> to reopen. Thanks.

Has it been considered to keep tasks open and set the Priority field to
'Lowest'? Plus potentially add the #Needs-volunteer project tag (though
nobody knows what that tag is supposed to exactly imply, I'm afraid)?
*If* separate project tags for "the software code base" vs "our team's
workboard" exist, it could also be an option to remove the "team
project tag" with a comment that the team does not have resources to
work on this. The latter completely depends on team workflows as some
teams have Herald filter rules to automatically add their "team project
tag" to tasks associated with a "software code base" tag they maintain.

In general, it is possible to exclude tasks with a certain priority or
certain tag from search results and from being displayed on workboards.


And on a high meta-level, hoping to offer some perspective:

Many people who use task tracking systems in collaborative free and
open source projects are not used to a single authority. This is
directly related to not necessarily realizing that product management
requires saying No/Wontfix/Declined to many bugs and ideas.
In theory, when the code base is public and welcomes contributions, a
random stranger could drive by and provide a patch for a low[est]
priority ticket that has been open for years. It's unlikely but not
impossible. That's why some people might expect tickets to remain open
if those tickets are not "completely out of scope" for the project.

andre
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Hi!

> I think we are misusing the term "priority" here. Priority for whom?

For whoever is responsible for the planning. Which in most cases is the
WMF team that is tagged, though if it's a project that belongs to
another team (or person), then it's this team's (or person's) planning.

> Setting something to "lowest" priority implies that users do not care about
> the item.

No, I don't think this is what it means. It should mean the planning
team does not have any immediate plans or resources to dedicate to it.
That's the consequence of using Phabricator as development tracking
tool. It's developer's priorities - which are supposed to mirror users'
ones, to a reasonable degree, but are not the same thing.

> I suggest we use dashboard columns for the planning activities, while
> keeping the tasks themselves fully under "requester's" control. E.g. let

I don't think it would help developers' work. If we need a mechanism to
track user's priorities in Phabricator, we should create one, but I
don't think breaking existing and used mechanism for tracking
development priorities is a good way to achieve that. Columns *are* used
for planning, but in a different way.

> the community decide what is more important, but use dashboards for team
> work planning. This way, if a volunteer developer wants to contribute,
> they would look for the highest-demanded bugs that don't have active status
> in any teams.

I recognize that highlighting issues that volunteers should concentrate
on is a valid need. But I don't think reusing the same mechanism as
ongoing development tracking is using now is going to be good. It may
get very confusing. We should try to find other way to specify that.

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On Tue, 2018-10-02 at 20:43 +0100, Yuri Astrakhan wrote:
> I think we are misusing the term "priority" here. Priority for whom?
> Setting something to "lowest" priority implies that users do not care about
> the item.

It does not, as "users" do not prioritize what developers work on.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Project_management#Setting_task_priorities

> I suggest we use dashboard columns for the planning activities, while
> keeping the tasks themselves fully under "requester's" control. E.g. let
> the community decide what is more important

IMHO software development is not a popularity contest.

For completeness, some attempts to make communities influence
development priorities exist, such as
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2018_Community_Wishlist_Survey

Furthermore, if you are aware of a functioning system to "let the
community decide" which also covers the needs of people we want to
attract as new future members of "the community" (we have about 900
Wikimedia sites with different needs), which takes self-selection bias
into consideration: I'd love to get more info. :)

Thanks,
andre
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On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 9:57 AM Brion Vibber <bvibber@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> *nods* I think the root problem is that the phabricator task system does
> double duty as both an *issue reporting system* for users and a *task
> tracker* for devs.
>

IMO that kind of double duty is normal for all software development project
management systems (and having to track bugs in two separate systems was in
fact rather painful in the dark ages when we had Bugzilla + some
team-specific external task management system). Rather, the problem is that
it's a task management system used by many different groups (including
volunteers) with overlapping scopes. Prioritization decisions are specific
to a team (or an organization at best) while Phabricator task status and
priority are global settings. This problem comes up in non-volunteer
contexts as well, when a task is relevant to two teams and a high priority
for one but low / zero for the other.

So IMO the sanest approach is for all teams to come up with ways to mark
prioritization that are local to their Phabricator projects (which
typically means using a team workboard for prioritization and having some
kind of "we don't intend to work on this" column).

Setting tasks to stalled when no one is planning to work on them would be a
reasonable practice if we decide to consistently use the stalled status
that way, but today it's used as "blocked" instead.
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Brion Vibber wrote:
>*nods* I think the root problem is that the phabricator task system does
>double duty as both an *issue reporting system* for users and a *task
>tracker* for devs.
>
>An issue reporting system should capture all actual problems and all
>actual suggestions, and is meant to provide visibility for the devs into
>the world of users. A task tracker should capture only things that are,
>or are planned to be, worked on and is a work planning tool for the devs.
>Secondarily if open, the task tracker provides visibility for the users
>into the world of devs.
>
>This mixup of concerns is endemic in open source software development,
>unfortunately, and leads to exactly the sorts of conflicts you mention.

I agree with there being multiple use-cases for Phabricator. I don't agree
that it's necessarily a problem. User feedback and bug reports often
directly lead to and can directly influence developer work. Mixing the two
groups is also a decent means of developing community and rapport between
developers and users in a shared space.

I also don't agree that a task tracker needs to only capture items to be
worked on. Filters, tags, and other user interface tweaks can address the
competing use-cases well enough, in my opinion, and as you note. The
number of tasks in the issue tracker is somewhat immaterial, just as the
English Wikipedia having over five million articles is immaterial, when
you're just reading one.

Another way to frame your root problem would be volunteer use versus
corporate use. In my experience, it's very common for valid bugs and
issues to be closed mercilessly in corporate issue trackers, as business
priorities shift and staff turns over. We may need to make it clearer and
more explicit that the Phabricator installation at
phabricator.wikimedia.org is for all members of the Wikimedia movement.

MZMcBride



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I'm grateful for this largely civil and productive discussion. I'd like to
suggest that the multiple sub-topics being discussed here might be easier
to follow if the entire discussion is moved to a wiki talk page, such as on
MediaWiki.org. I am not attempting to halt discussion or to tell people to
stop writing to the mailing list; moving to a wiki talk page is just a
suggestion.

Thanks,

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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My two cents:
I would personally make those type of tickets as "stalled", "stalled"
basically for me means blocked and these type of tasks are blocked on human
resources, some miracles might happen and we might end up having enough
resources to unblock it but until that day it's stalled IMO.

OTOH there are tickets that we don't have resources to work on it and we
never will, imagine a ticket with title "Rewrite mediawiki", it sounds good
as lots of part of it is old but we will never have such resource to do it.
IMO, we should call it declined on grounds of not having resources. Same
goes for "Every user should have a personal private wiki": We don't have
hardware resources for that and probably never will.

Best

On Wed, Oct 3, 2018 at 7:27 AM Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm grateful for this largely civil and productive discussion. I'd like to
> suggest that the multiple sub-topics being discussed here might be easier
> to follow if the entire discussion is moved to a wiki talk page, such as on
> MediaWiki.org. I am not attempting to halt discussion or to tell people to
> stop writing to the mailing list; moving to a wiki talk page is just a
> suggestion.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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Another side effect of closing a ticket with Declined, is that it doesn't
show up in search (because it's closed and closed tickets are omitted by
default). But if the problem or desire for the feature still exists, it is
likely to be reported again by users via a new ticket and other people then
have to go duplicate hunting. So that creates more duplicates to weed
through.

And when I work on something, I often take a look at boards and see if
there is anything else in the same area that might need work, or I use the
tickets to get a feeling of the direction that people want us to go. When
declined is mixed with "we can't work on this right now", that makes it a
lot harder to do that as well.

So i think Stalled is better. The problem with that can be that such
tickets show up in workboards, which can create a lot of load in the
browser if there are a lot of tickets. If we would tag all of such tickets
with something like 'need-volunteer', a team could customise their work
board filter to exclude all tickets with that tag. Or simply exclude the
entire status, but then you cannot effectively use it within the team
either. We do have to make that need-volunteer tag somewhat better defined
in the bug lifecycle and the tag's description in that case. That tag
started out more as an "opportunities for volunteers". Alternative is a new
"no-resourcing" tag. or something.

DJ

On Wed, Oct 3, 2018 at 1:03 PM Amir Sarabadani <ladsgroup@gmail.com> wrote:

> My two cents:
> I would personally make those type of tickets as "stalled", "stalled"
> basically for me means blocked and these type of tasks are blocked on human
> resources, some miracles might happen and we might end up having enough
> resources to unblock it but until that day it's stalled IMO.
>
> OTOH there are tickets that we don't have resources to work on it and we
> never will, imagine a ticket with title "Rewrite mediawiki", it sounds good
> as lots of part of it is old but we will never have such resource to do it.
> IMO, we should call it declined on grounds of not having resources. Same
> goes for "Every user should have a personal private wiki": We don't have
> hardware resources for that and probably never will.
>
> Best
>
> On Wed, Oct 3, 2018 at 7:27 AM Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm grateful for this largely civil and productive discussion. I'd like
> to
> > suggest that the multiple sub-topics being discussed here might be easier
> > to follow if the entire discussion is moved to a wiki talk page, such as
> on
> > MediaWiki.org. I am not attempting to halt discussion or to tell people
> to
> > stop writing to the mailing list; moving to a wiki talk page is just a
> > suggestion.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Pine
> > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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I'm not sure it is a so focused issue. A recent unrelated ticket I made was closed with the "no resource to waste on that" by a product owner.

A first thing is that I want to work on this issue, and would find that useful to use phabricator to track that task even if no specific resource would be dedicated to it beyond my own attention. On that regard, I red again the documentation and concluded that it was fine to reopen it in regard to what it is stated on ticket status life cycles. So far so good, I would say.

On the other hand, I discovered in the process that for some other people in the community phabricator is perceived as an hostile place, out of what they feel as part of "their" community. Actually, to the point that starting a proposal on phabricator might be interpreted as an attempt to enforce ideas without and against the consent of the community, rather than a call to give feedback and make evolve ideas together, and thus despite an immediate communication on the ticket creation.

That's what make me think that the issue discussed here is far deeper and have a great psychological effect on the cohesion of the Wikimedia community.

Cheers



Le 2 octobre 2018 19:24:23 GMT+02:00, Michael Holloway <mholloway@wikimedia.org> a écrit :
>I think I can provide some context here, because this really seems to
>be
>about something specific. The Reading Infrastructure team recently
>inherited maintenance responsibility for the Wikimedia maps stack,
>resourced on a very limited basis. Along with that, we inherited a
>backlog
>of many hundreds of tasks, many of which have seen no activity for
>years.
>For the past couple of months, a few of us have spent an hour each week
>trying to work through the backlog trying to triage all of these. In
>the
>course of these grooming meetings, we have closed more than a few tasks
>based on a combination of not having the resources to work on them, and
>it
>not seeming likely that anyone else will, either; the theory here is
>that
>it can better reflect reality to openly decline a task than to let it
>languish in a backlog indefinitely.
>
>If this contravenes the relevant norms, I apologize. If you were upset
>by
>the closing of what you believe to be a valid maps ticket, please feel
>free
>to reopen. Thanks.
>
>On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 10:06 PM Brian Wolff <bawolff@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Declined = WONTFIX (e.g. if some talented developer wrote a patch,
>and the
>> patch was perfect, you would still -2 it because the functionality is
>not
>> wanted/stupid/etc)
>>
>> Invalid = not a real bug. That should include things like spam, stuff
>where
>> the reporter is mistaken ( can't reproduce or if someone say reports
>a
>> sharepoint bug)
>>
>> I think the defining difference is its possible to write a patch for
>a
>> declined bug, even though it would be rejected, where an invalid bug
>by
>> definition is unfixable.
>>
>> Just my 2 cents, others may have different definitions.
>>
>> --
>> Brian
>>
>> p.s. ive never liked the "need volunteer" term for lowest priority -
>I have
>> always felt it had offensive implications as if volunteer time isnt
>as
>> important so they get the low priority bugs.
>>
>> On Tuesday, October 2, 2018, Joe Matazzoni <jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org>
>> wrote:
>> > I agree with Amir’s understanding. "Declined” is basically for
>ideas
>> whose proper timing is never. Valid ideas that we just aren’t going
>to
>> work on any time soon should go in a backlog or freezer or some such,
>where
>> they can await until some future project or other development makes
>them
>> relevant (at least theoretically).
>> >
>> > All of which does raise a slightly different question: I am much
>less
>> clear on what the exact difference is between “Invalid” and
>“Declined.”
>> Thoughts?
>> >
>> > Best,
>> > Joe
>> > _____________________
>> >
>> > Joe Matazzoni
>> > Product Manager, Collaboration
>> > Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco
>> > mobile 202.744.7910
>> > jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org
>> >
>> > "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share
>in
>> the sum of all knowledge."
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >> On Oct 2, 2018, at 9:31 AM, Amir E. Aharoni <
>> amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> I sometimes see WMF developers and product managers marking tasks
>as
>> >> "Declined" with comments such as these:
>> >> * "No resources for it in (team name)"
>> >> * "We won't have the resources to work on this anytime soon."
>> >> * "I do not plan to work on this any time soon."
>> >>
>> >> Can we perhaps agree that the "Declined" status shouldn't be used
>like
>> this?
>> >>
>> >> "Declined" should be valid when:
>> >> * The component is no longer maintained (this is often done as
>> >> mass-declining).
>> >> * A product manager, a developer, or any other sensible
>stakeholder
>> thinks
>> >> that doing the task as proposed is a bad idea. There are also
>variants
>> of
>> >> this:
>> >> * The person who filed the tasks misunderstood what the software
>> component
>> >> is supposed to do and had wrong expectations.
>> >> * The person who filed the tasks identified a real problem, but
>another
>> >> task proposes a better solution.
>> >>
>> >> It's quite possible that some people will disagree with the
>decision to
>> >> mark a particular task as "Declined", but the reasons above are
>> legitimate
>> >> explanations.
>> >>
>> >> However, if the task suggests a valid idea, but the reason for
>declining
>> is
>> >> that a team or a person doesn't plan to work on it because of lack
>of
>> >> resources or different near-term priorities, it's quite
>problematic to
>> mark
>> >> it as Declined.
>> >>
>> >> It's possible to reopen tasks, of course, but nevertheless
>"Declined"
>> gives
>> >> a somewhat permanent feeling, and may cause good ideas to get
>lost.
>> >>
>> >> So can we perhaps decide that such tasks should just remain Open?
>Maybe
>> >> with a Lowest priority, maybe in something like a "Freezer" or
>"Long
>> term"
>> >> or "Volunteer needed" column on a project workboard, but
>nevertheless
>> Open?
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Amir Elisha Aharoni · ?????? ????????? ??????????
>> >> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>> >> ?“We're living in pieces,
>> >> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore?
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> >> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Wikitech-l mailing list
>> > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>> _______________________________________________
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>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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--
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Just one note about "needs-volunteer".
If the staff maintaining an extension don't have time to work on a problem,
they may also not have time to review any changes relating to it.

If you do use this tag, I see this as an indication you are willing to take
time to review any contributions relating to that task and do so until the
task is seen to completion.

There is nothing I hate more than seeing volunteers submit patches to help
the project and not getting any code review. Our volunteers are important.


On Wed, 3 Oct 2018 at 05:15 Derk-Jan Hartman <d.j.hartman+wmf_ml@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Another side effect of closing a ticket with Declined, is that it doesn't
> show up in search (because it's closed and closed tickets are omitted by
> default). But if the problem or desire for the feature still exists, it is
> likely to be reported again by users via a new ticket and other people then
> have to go duplicate hunting. So that creates more duplicates to weed
> through.
>
> And when I work on something, I often take a look at boards and see if
> there is anything else in the same area that might need work, or I use the
> tickets to get a feeling of the direction that people want us to go. When
> declined is mixed with "we can't work on this right now", that makes it a
> lot harder to do that as well.
>
> So i think Stalled is better. The problem with that can be that such
> tickets show up in workboards, which can create a lot of load in the
> browser if there are a lot of tickets. If we would tag all of such tickets
> with something like 'need-volunteer', a team could customise their work
> board filter to exclude all tickets with that tag. Or simply exclude the
> entire status, but then you cannot effectively use it within the team
> either. We do have to make that need-volunteer tag somewhat better defined
> in the bug lifecycle and the tag's description in that case. That tag
> started out more as an "opportunities for volunteers". Alternative is a new
> "no-resourcing" tag. or something.
>
> DJ
>
> On Wed, Oct 3, 2018 at 1:03 PM Amir Sarabadani <ladsgroup@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > My two cents:
> > I would personally make those type of tickets as "stalled", "stalled"
> > basically for me means blocked and these type of tasks are blocked on
> human
> > resources, some miracles might happen and we might end up having enough
> > resources to unblock it but until that day it's stalled IMO.
> >
> > OTOH there are tickets that we don't have resources to work on it and we
> > never will, imagine a ticket with title "Rewrite mediawiki", it sounds
> good
> > as lots of part of it is old but we will never have such resource to do
> it.
> > IMO, we should call it declined on grounds of not having resources. Same
> > goes for "Every user should have a personal private wiki": We don't have
> > hardware resources for that and probably never will.
> >
> > Best
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 3, 2018 at 7:27 AM Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I'm grateful for this largely civil and productive discussion. I'd like
> > to
> > > suggest that the multiple sub-topics being discussed here might be
> easier
> > > to follow if the entire discussion is moved to a wiki talk page, such
> as
> > on
> > > MediaWiki.org. I am not attempting to halt discussion or to tell people
> > to
> > > stop writing to the mailing list; moving to a wiki talk page is just a
> > > suggestion.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Pine
> > > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
Jon Robson
twitter: @jdlrobson
linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorobson/
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În mie., 3 oct. 2018 la 19:08, Mathieu Lovato Stumpf Guntz
<psychoslave@culture-libre.org> a scris:
> On the other hand, I discovered in the process that for some other people in the community phabricator is perceived as an hostile place, out of what they feel as part of "their" community. Actually, to the point that starting a proposal on phabricator might be interpreted as an attempt to enforce ideas without and against the consent of the community, rather than a call to give feedback and make evolve ideas together, and thus despite an immediate communication on the ticket creation.

That's a totally orthogonal problem that existed from the bugzilla
days. Some people consider bug tracking as a "dev" activity that they
don't know anything about, others have difficulties communicating in
English and finally some just consider the WMF evil and want nothing
to do with it. Using Phabricator to track bugs and features in a
certain way (or at all) doesn't seem to have a lot to do with this
(unless there is some proof to the contrary that I'm not aware of).

The problem Amir brought up mainly affects people that already use Phabricator.

Strainu

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Regarding 'A recent unrelated ticket I made was closed with the "no
resource to waste on that" by a product owner.': I think that civil
messages explaining why a ticket won't be addressed would be helpful, as
would civil messages explaining why tasks are being moved to a "freezer",
instead of moves, closures, etc. with no explanation or with somewhat
insulting comments. Messages don't need to be elaborate, and can be
copypasted, so long as they explain in civil terms what's happening and
why. Keep in mind that some people who submit tickets may not natively
communicate in English, and may have little familiarity with the Wikimedia
use of Phabricator.

Regarding where to discuss proposals that address issues that have been
raised in this thread, as I said earlier, I suggest a wiki talk page.

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
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