Talk:Bug management/Phabricator etiquette

Couple of suggestions
Happy to see this happening! Just a few suggestions for improved tone:


 * "No pointless comments." The word "pointless" in this context seems a little more hostile than you probably intended. I'd suggest "off-topic," "subjective," or something like "comments not directly related to reporting, confirming, or fixing the bug."
 * "However, we require that in the process, you attack things, not people." Again, the word attack is a bit strong – I for one don't want anyone "attacking" anything! "Critique" or even "address" are more neutral alternatives. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It also needs some context for "attacks". A good link may be en/DontHateThePlayer; other relevant stuff ProductiveControversy, wiki:AdHominem, maaaybe wiki:AttackIdeasNotPeople. --Nemo 17:11, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm also glad to see this developing. I think the 'critique' wording is good.  ("you can critique things; don't attack people"). Superm401 - Talk 20:40, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

re pointless: If pointless sets off alarm bells, I'd say "no non-constructive comments". Maryana's list is a pretty good one (report, confirm, fix) to add in the body as an explanation of what non-constructive comments are; I'd also add triage/evaluate severity to that list. -LVilla (WMF) (talk) 17:33, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Vote
This is a good suggestion: «If you agree the bug should be fixed, vote for it by using the "(vote)" link». In fact, I find that telling people to vote for a bug is a good way to provide them a vent for their desires/anger which doesn't harm the discussion with noise. However, sadly not all products allow this... for those products, we should be more forgiving with mere "+1" comments, because they happen "by design". --Nemo 16:53, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Voting is a bad idea in bugzilla; it should be disabled and the reference here removed. As I said a decade ago, "If you need your bug marked up, argue persuasively in the bug that the bug has a serious user impact, or provide a patch." +1 or a vote is neither of those things. -LVilla (WMF) (talk) 17:29, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Respected contributors
I don't like this anti-bold statement. I don't think the point here is the ipse dixit; the point is first w:en:Wikipedia:Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass / w:en:Wikipedia:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man and second that what matters is the Consensus (or rather RoughConsensusAndWorkingCode?) among the relevant group, which may be very large in the case of some areas of MediaWiki core or just one person for some obscure extensions.

What's important is that the bug's status reflects reality, not who set it. --Nemo 17:11, 26 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I boldly changed the language to refer to maintainers and contributors to the component in question. Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   20:59, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Pointing out bad ettiquette
It says, "make them aware of this document, preferably via private email to avoid criticizing in public". I agree that's appropriate for minor cases, or when they're probably unaware of the policy. But for egregious bad conduct, I think it is sometimes appropriate to point it out publicly. Public silence can be interpreted as tacit support or tolerance of the bad conduct. Superm401 - Talk 20:40, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Link to "how to report a bug" and vice-versa?
Might want to link to How to report a bug and vice-versa? -LVilla (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

"other people's bugs"
From the main page:


 * 1) No messing with other people's bugs. Unless you are the bug assignee, have some say over the use of their time, or a contributor to the component in question, never change the "Priority" or "Target Milestone" fields. If in doubt, do not change the fields of bug reports that you are not the assignee of - add a comment instead, suggesting the change and the reasons for it.

This is pretty strong, and definitely not what we should be encouraging. If you're the reporter, or affected by the bug in a drastic manner, I'd hope you change the priority and leave a comment explaining why you did what you did. There are plenty of bugs I've fixed where I don't even use the extension or that code section, so as the assignee, I would be the wrong person to be setting priority. Legoktm (talk) 05:26, 4 December 2013 (UTC)