Bug management/Phabricator etiquette

This draft guideline is based on this conversation on teampractices@ (referring to the use of RESOLVED WONTFIX and related problems), this is a draft for behavior expectations in Wikimedia Bugzilla. It is based on Mozilla's Bugzilla etiquette. Please feel free to add comments to the discussion page.

Draft
Please follow these guidelines in order to keep Bugzilla a productive and constructive environment for collaboration on managing bug reports and feature requests.

Leave actionable comments. Comments should be constructive. That is, comments should be directly related to reporting, confirming, evaluating the severity, or fixing the bug. Constructive and helpful thoughts unrelated to the topic of the report, for example meta-level discussions on priorities in general, should go to the appropriate mailing lists or wiki talk pages.

No obligation. "Free software" means that nobody owns it exclusively, not "all the developers and users are at my orders." We're all here because we care, but your desires don't translate into an obligation for anyone other than you to work on them. Therefore, you should not act as if you expect someone to fix a bug by a particular date or release; nor as if bug reporters and commenters had an obligation to become professional testers for you. Aggressive or repeated demands will not be received well and will almost certainly diminish the impact and interest in your suggestions. Providing a patch often helps to speed up fixing a bug; +2 is one policy on approving code.

Criticize ideas, not people. A healthy amount of constructive criticism helps to improve software. Vibrant debate inside of the Wikimedia community is encouraged. In cases of disagreement, effectively argue your case without making conflicts personal and always treat people respectfully. Focus on development matters like interfaces, algorithms and implementation details, rather than on specific individuals.

Act in public. Unless you were asked to email somebody with specific information, place all information relating to a bug report in the report itself.

Bug fields aim for realism. Bug status, priority and milestone should reflect (summarise) reality, they don't cause it. Avoid changing them if you don't have experience doing so in the component in question: instead, argue persuasively in the report that the bug has a serious user impact, or provide a patch. In general: if in doubt, read about the meaning of the fields and do not change them, but add a comment suggesting the change and convincing reasons for it.

Repeated ignoring of these guidelines may result in losing  rights on Bugzilla or in your Bugzilla account being disabled.

If you see someone not following these rules, the first step is to make them aware of this document. This can be done via private email in minor cases, or in public in major cases to avoid the assumption of tolerated behavior. In the case of persistent offending, ping a Bugzilla administrator on Wikimedia IRC or send an email to the bug wrangler and ask them to look into it.

Document inspiration

 * https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html (CC BY-SA 3.0)
 * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/What_to_do_and_what_not_to_do_in_Bugzilla