Re: Votes are meaningless?
I find it easier to remember which bugs I'm currently following by simply checking my voting list. Which works only as long as you do not follow more than 20 bugs (10 for mail/news and 10 for the rest of Mozilla) True. Luckily, there aren't that many bugs I've found I wanted to follow. (I don't use Netscape mail/news so that leaves a whole section out.) Jason.
Re: Votes are meaningless?
Jacek Piskozub [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... Jason Bassford wrote: I find it easier to remember which bugs I'm currently following by simply checking my voting list. Which works only as long as you do not follow more than 20 bugs (10 for mail/news and 10 for the rest of Mozilla) Actually 10 for Browser, 10 for Mailnews, 5 for PSM, and 5 for Webtools.
Re: Votes are meaningless?
bugmail at all. I use a query based on bugs that I've reported, where I've added a comment, and on which I'm CC'd, that have changed recently. I find it easier to remember which bugs I'm currently following by simply checking my voting list. Jason.
Re: Votes are meaningless?
I usually vote for features, and bugs that I feel are important but getting overlooked (like GNKSA compliance). Generally I think that crashers are visible enough already, so voting for them would be sort of a waste. I vote for anything that's standing in my way of using the browser effectively. Most of the time this is always a crasher or bad behaviour (like the recently fixed browser focus issue), but I have also voted for a couple of features. My reasoning is that I want to know what's happening with work on a problem that I'd like to see solved. It doesn't matter if it's the most worked on crasher - I still would like to know what's going on with it and when a patch has been checked into the latest nightly. Jason.
Re: Votes are meaningless?
The reason people vote mostly on enhancement bugs is that the rational use of votes is to try to change the priorties of the engineers. If you see that work progresses on a bug you do not need to vote for it. Perhaps it would make more sense for Mozilla to have two different types of votes. One for crash/misbehaviour votes, and one for enhancement votes. You could then weight them according to priority - such as giving everybody 8 crash votes and 2 enhancement votes, or something to that affect. Then again, based on the way the system works, it's certainly possible to run a query and determine under what category each vote lies anyway. In that sense, there's no reason why, setting aside enhancements, the crash votes SHOULD be ignored... Jason.
Re: Votes are meaningless?
Jason Bassford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... I usually vote for features, and bugs that I feel are important but getting overlooked (like GNKSA compliance). Generally I think that crashers are visible enough already, so voting for them would be sort of a waste. I vote for anything that's standing in my way of using the browser effectively. Most of the time this is always a crasher or bad behaviour (like the recently fixed browser focus issue), but I have also voted for a couple of features. My reasoning is that I want to know what's happening with work on a problem that I'd like to see solved. It doesn't matter if it's the most worked on crasher - I still would like to know what's going on with it and when a patch has been checked into the latest nightly. With bugs like that, I put myself on the CC list. The email address I appear as in bugzilla has been out of commission for about a year now (I've tried getting it changed, but that's apparently impossible). So I don't get bugmail at all. I use a query based on bugs that I've reported, where I've added a comment, and on which I'm CC'd, that have changed recently.
Re: Votes are meaningless?
Hi Asa, thanks for the reply Asa Dotzler wrote: It is very underused making the wishes of a couple of people look much more important than they probably should be. We have 15,000 active Bugzilla accounts and the most voted for bug has like 150 votes!!! Low voter turnout is a problem. However, this doesn't mean that you should ignore the votes. As I said, it needs front-page visibility. Heck it's not even listed under get involved! My prediction is that if you advertised voting a bit more, you'd get input from people other than the most vocal ones--a lot of people who might otherwise lurk on the newsgroups or not read them at all. Plus it will help get non-developer users using bugzilla and will help prevent duplicate submissions and posts to the newsgroups. How else are you going to get feedback from users? Sure, talkback will tell you which bugs cause crashes, but how are you going to know which bugs cause the most annoyance for users? Or which enhancements they want to see the most? If 1% of the active Bugzilla users (there are actually 32,000 total accounts which makes it less than 1% if you count lurkers) think that an annoying bug or a request for a new feature is important, we should stop fixing crashers and dataloss bugs and jump right on that popular bug because it has more votes? No. I didn't say that. Obviously the developers have visibility and understanding that users don't, and are aware of internal bugs that may not make it to the user level. Votes should be a factor in the decision process. How important a factor is up to you. What if it is a request for a feature that would take significant enginering resources away from existing buggy features. I never see anyone voting for the mail crashes on startup bugs but there are 150 votes for a request to implement the mail PGP plugin. You can bet that if I had a problem with crashing on startup, I would have voted for it to be fixed. If a crash bug affects 5% of users, should it get more importance than a UI bug or enhancement that affects 95% of users? I doubt it. A great way to get that kind of data--the pulse of the users--is through voting. If we define best as the one that makes the most people happy the most amount of the time, then votes are the currency to express this. Giving the users the ability to help steer the project (tempered by the expert opinions of the developers) will guarantee that best will eventually be achieved. [Expert opinions are necessary because we don't want the McDonald's of browsers. Neither do we want to marginalize minorities (e.g. Linux).] note: I upped the number of votes from 3 to 10 in Browser and MailNews a while ago to see if it encouraged participation. Not much changed. Great idea. But advertise! Tell people it's an easy way for them to help even if they can't code or document! (I'm bcc'ing this to [EMAIL PROTECTED]) My followup questions was Isn't the voting scheme the only way you have of finding out what the customer wants to see implemented? She misunderstood my question and thought that I was asking what the engineers were interested in seeing implemented. [snip] Mozilla Milestones are downlaoded by a much larger audience than the 15000 bugzilla account holders (I think recent numbers are over 100,000 downloads per milestone) and even if all of those people got bugzilla accounts and voted for bugs we'd still have a pretty small sample of typical end users (Netscape's, IBM's or Beonex's customers) weighted heavily in the open source power user class (if there is such a thing). How about adding a link to the talkback window sending people to bugzilla so they can vote? Sure they'll probably vote for the crash that just happened, but it may get them involved in other votes as well. First of all, I'm sure that the developers already have good ideas of where they think they're effort should be expended. However, it seems to me that without direct input from the users, there's a good chance that something may be missed. mozilla.org's customers (Beonex, OEone, RedHat, Netscape, those folks) have their own mechanisms for gathering feedback from their audiences. For example, Netscape does preview releases and actual releases and gathers feedback from those beta users and customers. We don't let them send those hudreds of thousands or millions (I don't know what those numbers are) of people to Bugzilla. They gather feedback directly from their users and that feedback is distilled into bug reports/feature requests which are filed and hopefully fixed in Bugzilla. Interesting. I didn't know that scale was a problem. So here's my proposal: hype the bug voting some! Stick it on the main mozilla page along side the bugzilla link. And integrate number of votes in along with the talkback crash data, or at least keep a link to the search page with the highest voted bugs/features. What do you mean
Re: Votes are meaningless?
David Coppit [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... Hi Asa, thanks for the reply Asa Dotzler wrote: What if it is a request for a feature that would take significant enginering resources away from existing buggy features. I never see anyone voting for the mail crashes on startup bugs but there are 150 votes for a request to implement the mail PGP plugin. You can bet that if I had a problem with crashing on startup, I would have voted for it to be fixed. If a crash bug affects 5% of users, should it get more importance than a UI bug or enhancement that affects 95% of users? I doubt it. A great way to get that kind of data--the pulse of the users--is through voting. If we define best as the one that makes the most people happy the most amount of the time, then votes are the currency to express this. Giving the users the ability to help steer the project (tempered by the expert opinions of the developers) will guarantee that best will eventually be achieved. The problem with that is that most people don't vote for crashers, even major ones. I usually vote for features, and bugs that I feel are important but getting overlooked (like GNKSA compliance). Generally I think that crashers are visible enough already, so voting for them would be sort of a waste. I doubt I'm the only person who subscribes to that line of reasoning.
Re: Votes are meaningless?
Asa Dotzler wrote: snip We try to tackle the most important bugs first. At the top of the list are crashes, hangs and dataloss problems that affect our users. Very few people vote for these types of bugs. Perhaps voting would make more sense as a tool for Enhancement bugs only. It seems that's where they get the most use. The reason people vote mostly on enhancement bugs is that the rational use of votes is to try to change the priorties of the engineers. If you see that work progresses on a bug you do not need to vote for it. In other words, what you say is just that the voters disagree with the engineers on the present low priority of most enancement bugs. Jacek
Re: Votes are meaningless?
JTK [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Such as performance and usablility, there's a good chance that they could be missed. Oh wait, they've already been missed by orders of magnitude. Orders of magnitude being powers of ten, you're not even close. Oh come on, indulge me just a little hyperbole will ya? Sheesh, what a slavedriver! Hmm. You have said (incessantly), I'm just telling the truth even if it hurts and then when you're called on a blatant misstatement you start whining that it's just a little hyperbole. You also say repeatedly that you're not a troll. I think your record speaks for itself. Simon
Re: Votes are meaningless?
If we get to the wonderful position of having no crash bugs, we do not then land a whole slew of new features, however voted for they are. We keep the stability and work towards shipping. What about after shipping? I'm not necessarily only talking pre-1.0 release here. Will votes matter AFTER 1.0? grin I made no comment on that situation. But hopefully, yes. Then again, people can vote for something all they like but if no-one steps up to fix it... Gerv
Re: Votes are meaningless?
Jerry Baker wrote: Jason Bassford wrote: 1. Okay, if all development is forced to be only on crashers and dataloss bugs I can see how people will not be able to work on anything else until there are actually 0 of these. But, immediately after that, since there is nothing else, voting should become extremely important. So why not advertise that people's votes count? Because they don't. It's not anything to complain about, it's just how it is. How did that annoying Bruce Hornsby song go again?: That's just the way it is, Some things'll never change, That's just the way it is, Ah, but don't you believe them.
Re: Votes are meaningless?
If we get to the wonderful position of having no crash bugs, we do not then land a whole slew of new features, however voted for they are. We keep the stability and work towards shipping. What about after shipping? I'm not necessarily only talking pre-1.0 release here. Will votes matter AFTER 1.0? grin 2. Isn't there something wrong with the process when crashers and dataloss bugs aren't ALWAYS the first priority in development? Why No. For example, we left crashers in the old imglib for months because we were rewriting it. Were developers only working on the old imglib for months (and other crasher dataloss bugs) or were they also working on non-critical feature enhancement requests and, therefore, NOT on the critical bugs? (I suspect they had to have been - otherwise certain features would never have made their way into the product.) Again, my question is why? I know you have to have features but the point of my question was about priorities. Why allow only critical fixes into the trunk as a publicly perceived deadline is approaching? Whatever policy is in place should be in place for all stages of development, not just the stage that makes you look good... (Not to mention the fact that the 1.0 criteria are still, AFAIK, only vaguely defined.) Jason.
Re: Votes are meaningless?
David Coppit wrote: So here's my proposal: hype the bug voting some! Stick it on the main mozilla page along side the bugzilla link. And integrate number of votes in along with the talkback crash data, or at least keep a link to the search page with the highest voted bugs/features. I think that while it's true that the voting system hasn't achieved as much as I thought it would when I first proposed it, I'm not sure it has been as useless as some people have said it is. Firstly, it's really hard to determine who is using the votes. As a member of the Bugzilla team I try and take the votes of bugs in the Bugzilla product into account (but this is probably not obvious), but as you've touched on, there's a lot more issues. For example, votes mainly go to enhancements and not bugs, but bugs should be given higher priorities in general. Then you've got the fact that Mozilla still has not achieved N4 parity in various areas. Although it's obviously surpassed it in some, Mozilla still has too many bugs, too many perf problems and too many missing N4 features. Hence we haven't really got to the stage where we can say the Netscape engineers are looking to see what features they might implement. One benefit of votes - although not the intended one - is that other people can see the major issues that are affecting users in the product. And let's not forget that Bugzilla as a piece of software is used on many installations. For example, open source projects that use Bugzilla don't have other channels of (possibly paying) customer feedback, so voting could be their only feedback. Regarding highlighting votes, I think we could certainly do more. Bugs like bug #15967, bug #15806 and a generalisation of bug #36013 to votes count help here. I don't have any ideas at the moment about how it could be improved, but if you can think of anything else, feel free to file them as bugs against the Bugzilla component of the Webtools product. -- Matthew Tuck: Software Developer All-Round Nice Guy My Short Autobiography: 1985 Grade Bin Monitor 1990 Class Clown Award 1992 Awarded Most Likely To Spontaneously Combust 1996 Crowned Galactic Emperor 1998 Released From Smith Psychiatric Hospital
Re: Votes are meaningless?
I'm not sure I completely understand this. If more work is being done on crashers, etc. then there will end up being less (tending towards, hopefully, 0) of them. The fewer number of crashers, the GREATER amount of time that people will have to work on non-crash related bugs. Some comments on this thinking: If we get to the wonderful position of having no crash bugs, we do not then land a whole slew of new features, however voted for they are. We keep the stability and work towards shipping. 2. Isn't there something wrong with the process when crashers and dataloss bugs aren't ALWAYS the first priority in development? Why No. For example, we left crashers in the old imglib for months because we were rewriting it. Gerv
Re: Votes are meaningless?
JTK wrote: Am I wrong in stating the obvious fact (which I need not remind you even Mr. Hickson agrees with) that Mozilla is nowhere near release quality? And that development has been going on for four years? Yes and yes. Since you love playing semantics, I'll do the same. To be strict, while there has been work done on browsers at the Mozilla organization wince March 31 1999, THIS project has NOT been going on since then. The CURRENT Mozilla browser project was started in mid October 1999, after dumping the decrepit MozClassic codebase. And as for being nowhere near release quality, since this is extremely subjective, there IS no right or wrong. Some of us feel Mozilla is extremely close to release quality and approaching hitting that milestone rapidly. And the commie graphics are just as silly and counterproductive now as they were before I gave up fighting that battle. This is also subjective. You see them as commie. People with even a minimal art history education (or even moderately cultured) see Constructivist style art, which is rather attractive, if needing some work (which it does, it's looked a bit aged and could use a bit of sprucing and polish [note to self, DO THAT]). As a famous sailor man once said, I yam what I yam. There's no act here, you can see that for yourself, if you so choose. Not anymore, correct... I've contributed what even *Gerv* believes to be a reasonable performance criteria for 1.0 release, with some help from even you Lord, so I'm one of the Body now. Yes, Gerv, myself, Ian all agreed you had several valid points, and nearly all of your points were agreed upon after some discussion and minor modification and tighter description. We're stuck with each other. That doesn't mean you have to like it when I say it's insane that the project is this far from the finish line after having humped it for so many years, but I respectfully submit that ignoring that fact does nobody any good, while shouting that fact from the rooftops does nobody any harm. That you feel it is far from release does not bother me NEARLY as much as your insistence that this is a fact, when it is little more than an opinion based on a large body of incorrect information, and your stubborn refusal to admit when you are wrong on some of those bits of information. I also submit that the Mozilla project is big enough for the both of us. If it isn't, well, then ask yourself who's right, and who's wrong. Well, since I'm ALWAYS right, I think that answer is self evident. ;) Since it's not Mozilla's responsibility to transcribe open source events, I doubt you'll get it from Mozilla.org. Um, wouldn't Mozilla.org *want* to publish a State of the Mozilla report? If not, why not, he asked rhetorically? Possibly, but it's not on the agenda as an official project. Why don't YOU go find it, polish it up, and submit it to the website to see if someone will post it? Well, maybe I'll do just that Emmanuel! Clear a space on the web site for me guys! Subject to a little proof reading mind you. :) Of course, it's all a conspiracy JTK. She deliberately tried ot be obscure. How does one get from customer to developer otherwise? Well I guess we'll just have to wait until the transcript surfaces. Maybe she just GENUINELY misunderstood the gentleman. Since people involved with the product know that Mozilla itself is NOT meant for the end user (end user products are generally round smooth objects too large to fit in the user's mouth to prevent choking, while currently Mozilla has plenty of sharp points [ask a user to install Moz from the zipfile, they'll drool halfway through the sentence]) but the developer and/or gearhead, it's not illogical to assume that when inquiring about Mozilla, the term of user loosely translated to developer since THEY are the intended user base, who will then sand down the rough parts to end users won't cry or hurt themselves. You know Jesus, there's more than a few here who are under the very mistaken impression that Mozilla will indeed take over the world, that's its a platform, not a browser. Do you deny this? No more than I deny that some people feel that Microsoft can do no wrong, the Internet will bring the destruction of morals / family / society / world+dog / what have you, or that certain people tragically hold on to the idea that XUL is a titanic albatross. There are even people that believe that the moon landings were faked and that the earth is flat (and consequently that the idea of a round earth is preposterous since it's so obviously flat). I personally believe that Mozilla will become a respected platform in the non-MS OS world, and even make decent inroads on the Windows platforms in their dwindling lifespan. Once again, AOL is not Mozilla, and Mozilla is not AOL. Just because you say so, does not make it true. What more do you want for proof? Some solid evidence to the contrary. This reminds me of what my mother would
Re: Votes are meaningless?
Sadly, voting is going to get less relevant, rather than more. As we move towards Mozilla 1.0, there will be fewer cycles for everyone's favourite unimplemented cool feature as engineers concentrate on less sexy things like crashers and dataloss bugs. I'm not sure I completely understand this. If more work is being done on crashers, etc. then there will end up being less (tending towards, hopefully, 0) of them. The fewer number of crashers, the GREATER amount of time that people will have to work on non-crash related bugs. Some comments on this thinking: 1. Okay, if all development is forced to be only on crashers and dataloss bugs I can see how people will not be able to work on anything else until there are actually 0 of these. But, immediately after that, since there is nothing else, voting should become extremely important. So why not advertise that people's votes count? 2. Isn't there something wrong with the process when crashers and dataloss bugs aren't ALWAYS the first priority in development? Why should a completely arbitrary 1.0 release suddenly change development priority? This is akin to saying that sloppy work is perfectly acceptable up until the point when the boss walks by. If there is no process in place to ensure that such things always have top priority then there's something wrong. Jason.
Re: Votes are meaningless?
JTK wrote: Ooof, that must have been a rough gig: Well, it's like four years now, still nothing anywhere near ready to release. But we do have some 'liberating' commie graphics. There's coffee and cookies in the lobby, thanks for listening. I knew the civility and level-headedness that was starting to show in n.p.m.performance was all an act. I'm just surprised it broke so soon, I was hoping against hope that it wasn't an act. We gonna get a transcript of that, Maozilla Politburo? Since it's not Mozilla's responsibility to transcribe open source events, I doubt you'll get it from Mozilla.org. Why not ask a site dedicated to the Open Source community at large, or an O'Reilly site? After all, we don't ask you for current news, we go to news organizations for it. My followup questions was Isn't the voting scheme the only way you have of finding out what the customer wants to see implemented? She misunderstood my question and thought that I was asking what the engineers were interested in seeing implemented. You mean she 'misunderstood' my question. Of course, it's all a conspiracy JTK. She deliberately tried ot be obscure. You've once again foiled our plan to take over the world - er, make a browser. Such as performance and usablility, there's a good chance that they could be missed. Oh wait, they've already been missed by orders of magnitude. Orders of magnitude being powers of ten, you're not even close. AOL's Mozilla... Once again, AOL is not Mozilla, and Mozilla is not AOL. Just because you say so, does not make it true. What more do you want for proof? 3. Same as #2, but at the same time contribute administratively, as I have done with my less than twice as bad release criteria proposal. This takes the most effort, but it gets the most notice. Because it was PRODUCTIVE and OBJECTIVE, as opposed to your normal worthless drivel that is filled with nothing but misinformation, wild accusations, and vitriol. Can't wait to read that transcript. Then go get it already. -- jesus X [ Booze-fueled paragon of pointless cruelty and wanton sadism. ] email [ jesusx @ who.net ] web [ http://burntelectrons.com ] [ Updated April 29, 2001 ] tag [ The Universe: It's everywhere you want to be. ] warning [ All your base are belong to us. ]
Re: Votes are meaningless?
Aiy aiy aiy, was part of the discussion too. Not sure there was recording equipment in the room, so transcripts maybe impossible. Encouraging votes in usenet does sound like a nice idea.My votes: 35011 [DOM] window.onscroll and element.onscroll don't fire 52599 xul:srollbars should generate onscroll events 59108 Scrollbar doesn't appear in Category pane [eg, Preferences] 71771 Tabbed dialogs always process Enter/Return key even if not default key. 74211 Scrollbar jumps to top when DOM is modified 75452 [RFE] Save last created in folder as default 77408 accel+W doesn't close Page Info window 89016 User JavaScripts on page load 91516 IFRAMEs do not respect z-index of other, non-iframe content These are not whiz-bang features for the most part, but bread and butter DHTML requirements. There's a lot of space between cool features and data loss bugs alas. Note, the my votes link is rather buried, only accessible on an bug detail page, not on search results, new bugs today, etc. Where's that bugzilla bug tracker again? -AE
Re: Votes are meaningless?
jesus X wrote: JTK wrote: Ooof, that must have been a rough gig: Well, it's like four years now, still nothing anywhere near ready to release. But we do have some 'liberating' commie graphics. There's coffee and cookies in the lobby, thanks for listening. I knew the civility and level-headedness that was starting to show in n.p.m.performance was all an act. What are you talking about rabbi? What's uncivil or not level-headed about anything I said here? Am I wrong in stating the obvious fact (which I need not remind you even Mr. Hickson agrees with) that Mozilla is nowhere near release quality? And that development has been going on for four years? And the commie graphics are just as silly and counterproductive now as they were before I gave up fighting that battle. I'm just surprised it broke so soon, I was hoping against hope that it wasn't an act. As a famous sailor man once said, I yam what I yam. There's no act here, you can see that for yourself, if you so choose. I've contributed what even *Gerv* believes to be a reasonable performance criteria for 1.0 release, with some help from even you Lord, so I'm one of the Body now. We're stuck with each other. That doesn't mean you have to like it when I say it's insane that the project is this far from the finish line after having humped it for so many years, but I respectfully submit that ignoring that fact does nobody any good, while shouting that fact from the rooftops does nobody any harm. I also submit that the Mozilla project is big enough for the both of us. If it isn't, well, then ask yourself who's right, and who's wrong. We gonna get a transcript of that, Maozilla Politburo? Since it's not Mozilla's responsibility to transcribe open source events, I doubt you'll get it from Mozilla.org. Um, wouldn't Mozilla.org *want* to publish a State of the Mozilla report? If not, why not, he asked rhetorically? Why not ask a site dedicated to the Open Source community at large, or an O'Reilly site? After all, we don't ask you for current news, we go to news organizations for it. Well, maybe I'll do just that Emmanuel! Clear a space on the web site for me guys! My followup questions was Isn't the voting scheme the only way you have of finding out what the customer wants to see implemented? She misunderstood my question and thought that I was asking what the engineers were interested in seeing implemented. You mean she 'misunderstood' my question. Of course, it's all a conspiracy JTK. She deliberately tried ot be obscure. How does one get from customer to developer otherwise? Well I guess we'll just have to wait until the transcript surfaces. You've once again foiled our plan to take over the world - er, make a browser. You know Jesus, there's more than a few here who are under the very mistaken impression that Mozilla will indeed take over the world, that's its a platform, not a browser. Do you deny this? Such as performance and usablility, there's a good chance that they could be missed. Oh wait, they've already been missed by orders of magnitude. Orders of magnitude being powers of ten, you're not even close. Oh come on, indulge me just a little hyperbole will ya? Sheesh, what a slavedriver! AOL's Mozilla... Once again, AOL is not Mozilla, and Mozilla is not AOL. Just because you say so, does not make it true. What more do you want for proof? Some solid evidence to the contrary. The shocking almost-wholesale acceptance of my performance criteria for Mozilla 1.0 release is a good start, but it remains to be seen if it will be enforced. If AOL's screaming for a 1.0 release and Mozilla says it ain't soup yet, cram it, I guess I'd have to consider that pretty solid evidence. 3. Same as #2, but at the same time contribute administratively, as I have done with my less than twice as bad release criteria proposal. This takes the most effort, but it gets the most notice. Because it was PRODUCTIVE and OBJECTIVE, as opposed to your normal worthless drivel that is filled with nothing but misinformation, wild accusations, and vitriol. Who's got the vitriol now? Calm down Jesus. Can't wait to read that transcript. Then go get it already. I'm on the case! NE HA!!
Re: Votes are meaningless?
On Wed, 1 Aug 2001, JTK wrote: I've contributed what even *Gerv* believes to be a reasonable performance criteria for 1.0 release Er, well, for the record, Gerv was not quite as enthusiastic as I was. :-) If AOL's screaming for a 1.0 release [...] As far as I can tell (as an AOL employee), AOL couldn't care less when Mozilla 1.0 is released. AOL has its own products, its own product version numbers, and the quality of their product is not affected by Mozilla's version number. (It is, however, affected by Mozilla's quality. And hence AOL want Mozilla to be of better quality, as proved by their significant development and financial contributions to the project.) Similarly for the other commercial contributors or embedders of Mozilla (such as ActiveState, IBM, and OEOne). -- Ian Hickson )\ _. - ._.) fL Netscape, Standards Compliance QA /. `- ' ( `--' +1 650 937 6593`- , ) - ) \ irc.mozilla.org:Hixie _ (.' \) (.' -' __
Re: Votes are meaningless?
David Coppit wrote: So during Mitchell Baker's talk on the State of the Mozilla Project at the Open Source Convention, Ooof, that must have been a rough gig: Well, it's like four years now, still nothing anywhere near ready to release. But we do have some 'liberating' commie graphics. There's coffee and cookies in the lobby, thanks for listening. We gonna get a transcript of that, Maozilla Politburo? I asked why there are hardly any votes for bugs. Her response was that voting seemed like a good idea, but was not something that turned out to be useful in practice. No American can seriously again say 'my vote doesn't count.' - Bill Clinton, referring to the 2000 US Presidential election in which millions of votes were not counted. Honest to God, he actually said that. My followup questions was Isn't the voting scheme the only way you have of finding out what the customer wants to see implemented? She misunderstood my question and thought that I was asking what the engineers were interested in seeing implemented. You mean she 'misunderstood' my question. First of all, I'm sure that the developers already have good ideas of where they think they're effort should be expended. However, it seems to me that without direct input from the users, there's a good chance that something may be missed. Such as performance and usablility, there's a good chance that they could be missed. Oh wait, they've already been missed by orders of magnitude. So here's my proposal: hype the bug voting some! Stick it on the main mozilla page along side the bugzilla link. And integrate number of votes in along with the talkback crash data, or at least keep a link to the search page with the highest voted bugs/features. FWIW, here's my vote list so far: Well that's the whole problem David, it ain't worth a proverbial hill of beans. AOL's Maozilla Politburo never has wanted and most certainly does not now want user input. Voting only works when the votes don't go down the shitter. Since that's all voting for bugs is, and it isn't going to change, there are only three options available: 1. Play your violin while AOL HQ burns. This is probably the most productive choice in terms of results gotten vs. effort expended, since regardless of what anybody outside (and many inside) of AOL does, it's a near certainty the results will be the same. 2. Bitch. Loudly. Plainly. Incessantly. In public. Not in some hidden bugzilla gulag where nobody can hear you scream, just the way the Duma likes it. 3. Same as #2, but at the same time contribute administratively, as I have done with my less than twice as bad release criteria proposal. This takes the most effort, but it gets the most notice. Can't wait to read that transcript.
Re: Votes are meaningless?
JTK [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED], on 31 Jul 2001: 1. Play your violin while AOL HQ burns. This is probably the most productive choice in terms of results gotten vs. effort expended, since regardless of what anybody outside (and many inside) of AOL does, it's a near certainty the results will be the same. AOL has more subscribers than you can count. Although you may only be able to count to 20 (if you take your shoes off), AOL does have an incredible user base. In the millions. AOL's headquarters will never burn to the ground, barring a freak accident, and if it does it will be rebuilt. They do make an incredible amount of money. 2. Bitch. Loudly. Plainly. Incessantly. In public. Not in some hidden bugzilla gulag where nobody can hear you scream, just the way the Duma likes it. 3. Same as #2, but at the same time contribute administratively, as I have done with my less than twice as bad release criteria proposal. This takes the most effort, but it gets the most notice. Can anyone please get a count of the number of hits to bugzilla, and the number that don't come internally from netscape.com/aol.com? Can't wait to read that transcript. -- ICQ: 123728792 AIM: FlyersR1 9 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ = m
Re: Votes are meaningless?
JTK wrote: David Coppit wrote: So during Mitchell Baker's talk on the State of the Mozilla Project at the Open Source Convention, Ooof, that must have been a rough gig: Well, it's like four years now, still nothing anywhere near ready to release. But we do have some 'liberating' commie graphics. There's coffee and cookies in the lobby, thanks for listening. Wow. No angst in that post. :) Personally, I appreciate the we'll release when it's ready and no sooner position. Mozilla is trying to meet a lot of requirements, and that's a hard thing to do and still get something out the door. I predict that once something usable comes out (and I think it has), you'll see a lot of rapid development a la grow, don't build (thanks Fred Brooks) 2. Bitch. Loudly. Plainly. Incessantly. In public. Not in some hidden bugzilla gulag where nobody can hear you scream, just the way the Duma likes it. My experience doesn't match yours, so I'll call it an invitation to discuss rather than bitching... I wonder if Moz developers cruise this newsgroup? Is there a better place for this discussion? David
