Bugs only, no wishing pond?
page revision: 0, last edited: 17 Nov 2009 21:25
We need to have important (and reproduced) bugs listed separately from feature wishes, I-would-like-this-to-work-differently requests and I-think-this-is-not-working-correctly and I-deeply-believe-this-should-be-done-like-this suggestions. This is crucial to make what we already have working well.
Having this solved we can think about enriching the system and this is totally different process. It needs to be carefully analyzed, wishes need to be classified and chosen on basis on how many users will benefit from it and how important this is to enable users to create more sophisticated applications. What wishes to reject or accept, but schedule them for later.
Bugs are much simpler to work on and they require minimum possible time to fix. Usually there's no design/discussion phase. If something already designed and discussed is not working properly, it needs to be just fixed.
Piotr Gabryjeluk
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Okay, I agree with that, and it makes sense.
Another question: are spelling mistakes considered to be bugs? There is a thread on the community for them but should they be moved to bugs.wikidot.com when it is complete?
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Well this is a good question. I believe most of the spelling bugs fall into two or three groups:
The first group is something like missing "not" in the sentence, which makes the text meaning completely the opposite. I believe this is a bug and is critical.
The second group is something like a typo or some grammar mistake — it does not look really good, it's not strictly-correct in the language-science sense, but the text meaning is clear to everyone. I believe this should be mark as an improvement — something is not perfect and needs to be fixed, and we know exactly how to do this. Issues like this should be grouped and done in batches (this is opinion from a developer's point of view).
The third group is for sentences that are grammatically and semantically correct, but someone believes, they should be put in other words to better describe their meaning. This is usually subjective opinion and in fact, this should be treated just like improvement proposal — we need a design and discussion at least.
This is just my opinion on language mistakes, so the actual rules may be a bit different.
Piotr Gabryjeluk
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That makes sense — but history has proven that if someone can put something in the wrong place, they will ;-)
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
And when it comes to bugs.wikidot.com, such submissions will be deleted as just inappropriate. Bugs is meant to be for real bugs only.
Piotr Gabryjeluk
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The spelling corrections thread in the community forum seems to be working well enough. I say, if it ain't broke don't fix it.
Whereas, the reporting of proper bugs does IMO need an overhaul, since there doesn't seem to be much guidance at present. Also, I find it difficult to determine whether a bug has already been reported or if there is something very similar and possibly related out there.
Sue
The main reason for a site / workspace dedicated for bugs is that they have a specific workflow:
This applies to spelling mistakes and other cosmetic issues and I do plan to include those. It does not apply to wishes and feature requests. It may apply to very specific improvements that can be considered design bugs.
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I can understand wanting to formalise reporting of spelling mistakes and I agree that there is a similar workflow to bug reporting. But I am surprised that you are thinking of combining the two processes, since there are different levels of complexity involved. Maybe I have misunderstood you?
I run the risk of stereotyping here, for which I apologise, but here are my thoughts.
Spellings
Bugs
So, I would keep them separate, maybe bugs.wikidot.com and spellings.wikidot.com.
Sue
suef: the purpose of bugs.wikidot.com is to keep track of bugs on Wikidot, not to discuss, and a bug is:
We want to keep track on:
Almost everything that needs discussion is not a bug. This includes suggestion to change (not fix) some description texts. So basically discussion on bugs are almost not needed (though they can be useful to let people point more information that can help developers, but that's to help fix bugs and not discuss the fix).
Piotr Gabryjeluk
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It's effort involved in managing, watching, tracking two sites vs. effort saved in separating the work.
And then there is a continuum from spelling mistakes to bugs: bad labels, poor error messages, etc.
I know what I want: one public tracker for issues that involve changes to wikidot.com code. Any correction to the code should be treated as an issue, no matter how small. Obviously they can be lumped if they're related. Pre-filtering of issues on community forums is fine. Those are not a tracker.
I'm not interested in building multiple sites for this. Issues can be categorized as needed, just as we do with threads on this forum.
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