[Libreoffice-qa] What should we do with bugs filed against Extensions/Templates?

[Robinson Tryon]

On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Rainer Bielefeld
<LibreOffice at bielefeldundbuss.de> wrote:
> Robinson Tryon schrieb:
>
>> Bugzilla is for bugs that we're willing to address/fix as a project,
>
> Hi Robinson,
>
> I am (more or less) the the creator of the LibO Bugzilla bug tracking
> system

Really? cool -- I didn't know that. Learn something new every day, I guess :-)

> so I think I have some overview what should be done and what should
> not be done.

Oh, okay. I'm a relative newcomer to the LibreOffice project, so I'm
not aware of all of the general rules on how we handle stuff or who is
officially in charge of what pieces of the project.

If Bugzilla falls under your official oversight, then I agree that we
should consult you when we deal with it. From my standpoint, I think
that we can be more successful and productive as a QA Team (work more
efficiently, recruit and retain more members, etc..), and cultivate a
better working relationship with our users if we make some changes
both to our workflow for Bugzilla and for the Extension site.

>> I'll leave some notes there, and make a note about that page section
>> in the agenda for our next meeting. What do you think about moving
>> that proposal to the 'Talk' page for BugTriage?
>
> No! Consider that text as the current regulations for the proceeding

I think that we're just chatting informally about some proposals right
now. Talk of "regulations" or "proceedings" seems to describe a much
more formal process than our current method of meetings or current
guidelines on the QA pages (e.g. BugTriage) would suggest.

Are you suggesting that the description you wrote up on the QA-FAQ
page should be considered the canonical method of triaging extension
bugs until the next QA meeting? My understanding was that no
documentation about triaging extension bugs existed up to this point
(at least not that I could find), so I'm not sure why your
"regulations" should be considered more official than any of our other
proposals.

> , if you
> or anybody else has well founded suggestions he can simply add amendments or
> corrections with some explications on the talk page.

Sorry, which Talk: page? If you are suggesting some kind of formal
proposal, I believe it might be appropriate to put it on its own wiki
page?

> Please excuse me for my
> direct statement: we do not need a theoretical consideration here, the
> experienced key players know how to handle that.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Who are the "experienced
key players" of whom you speak, and what, *precisely*, are they able
to handle?

At first glance, I thought that your statement was telling me that
that as I was neither a key player nor an experienced player that I
shouldn't make suggestions, but I'm sure that that inclination was
misfounded.

> Butneverthless  I agree with some of your and especially Cor's arguments, it
> is important to state that it's a LibO / TDF service to contribute a
> platform to make public the Extensions, but the Extensions are out of our
> responsibility, and users install them on their own risk and have no claims
> against LibO concerning correct function of the extensions, maintenance and
> so on. Especially unexperienced end users might draw wrong conclusions if
> they find a bug report concerning an extension among all the other LibO
> related bug reports. I will add an additional hint in the Bugzilla and BSA
> Help for that Component so that everybody can see that the handling of
> Extension bugs might differ from the handling of bug report related to LibO
> core components.

What do you think about proposing and discussing changes to the
Bugzilla/BSA Help on the QA list? I'm not sure we need to discuss all
changes we make to these texts, but given that we've already had a bit
of a discussion on this topic this week it might be nice to hear
suggestions from multiple people on what wording would be most clear
to our users.

> If somebody thinks we need some more explication / clarification on the
> Extensions Website, he should simply submit a bug report. Experts will find
> that, discuss if necessary and contribute a fix.

Sorry to keep on asking questions, but who are these "Experts", and is
there any chance that we could encourage that discussion to take place
in public instead of in private?

Up to this point we've had some really great discussion about the
interaction between QA and the Extensions site. Cor brought up some
good points, Joel chimed in, we've cc'd Andreas (who I believe is in
charge of Extensions), and it sounded like we were well on our way to
communally coming up with a great plan that would make things easier
for the QA Team and make things clearer for users who want to install
extensions.

Rainer, your message seems to suggest that we should hand over this
work to the "experienced key players" and "Experts" and let them make
all the decisions from this point forward. Is that an accurate
characterization of your email?

I'd like to suggest that we work communally and openly to discuss and
solve our current action items (from our last team meeting). That
seems like the best way for us to include the viewpoints of
individuals and hear suggestions from all the members of our team, and
to continue working in a meritocratic fashion.

Thanks,
--R