subject:"Re\: Severity levels"

To every Wine user, their application not working is critical.  This is 
clear by all the bugs that are logged incorrectly every day, because 
nobody bothered reading the FAQ.

Yep, but that's more an indication on how much work remains to be done on wine 
than it is an incorrect severity level.
If Photoshop(the eternal example) should stop working on windows due to a 
regression, I am sure the users would consider it critical when they report it 
to Microsoft.

But as the wine project progresses, severity levels will hopefully drop so that 
there will be more nuances. 

I just think there is something severely when registering a bug that results in 
unworkable applications is considered a normal or even minor bug. 
To me, that's sending the wrong signals about the ambition of the project. 
Unless the not yet suitable for general use from the faq is everywhere with 
blinking warning signs.

//Nicklas

RE: Severity levels

So you suggest making the severity ratings meaningless to anyone but
... well, you don't actually mention anyone knowing what they *really*
mean, but I assume an exclusive clique of developers or bugzilla
admins? Users have different opinions on what level of bug they
encounter depending on what *task* they're trying to perform, which is
not particularly useful to developers who need strict reproducability.

No, I mean that the actual meaning of the words low, medium, high and 
Critical will suffice.
I think most people have a fair understanding what medium and critical 
means. 
This is not meaningless at all, to trying to clarify these levels is quite 
pointless though.
Yes, some people tend to exaggerate their issues, but that's just the way it is.
And to my experience, they are few. Most actually don't exaggerate as much. 
To them, the situation IS critical, bordering on panic.
Rather, thinking that their users are exaggerating is a way for developers to 
not let reality come to close.
Hell, I do it myself right now. :-)

I don't see how the reproducibility connects to the severity level?

Regarding the priority flag..i was referring to it's visibility, not its state.


There already is a separate category flag. It's called severity and
it indicates roughly the amount of *functionality* lost due to the
bug. Priority does not indicate the severity of a bug; a bug may
have low priority due to limitations outside of Wine (such as some
blocker bugs for copy-protection systems which can't be supported in
Wine).

My point is that there should be no need for that flag. 
Let the users have it as input, and let the developers use component+priority.

You're not going to like this, but users don't matter quite *that*
much on bugzilla. The bug tracker is a developer's tool, and although
users are essential to the process (submitting bugs and new
information on request), it should be designed as a developer's tool.
A user's impression of their problem is irrelevant to the hard data
they can provide about lost or missing functionality.

You are right. I don't like it.
Especially because the bug tracker is the entire projects tool, not only the 
developers.
I this matter can only compare with my own professional(commercial) experience 
and there, 
the ones submitting bugs has a *lot* to say, since they won't submit bugs 
unless they are 
critical if we don't present them with a smooth interface. 
Hmm..only critical bugs..now where have i heard about that..? :-)

//Nicklas

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-07 Thread Ken Sharp




Nicklas Börjesson wrote:
No it isn't.  It's an indication on how many people think they're more 
important than anyone else filing a bug.


I think that you are wrong. Granted, some people do, they are called morons.
But most people aren't morons. They are people, and to them, the issue really 
is critical. At least they think that. Give people the benefit of the doubt here.


How many times does this have to be repeated?  Severity levels are NOT 
determined by how much a user wants the app to work.  They're just not, 
deal with it.




It doesn't matter what the users think, we've been over this, it would 
be up to MS coders.
They would put a high priority on it because Adobe it a major player, 
and I'm sure MS makes a lot of money out of them one way or another. 
This is a FOSS project and has no bearing on severity levels.


So Photoshop has not been the least prioritized? 


What are you talking about?  A lot of people use Photoshop, that's why 
it has been given more attention.  This is FOSS software, the more 
popular an application is, the more people will be involved in getting 
it to work.  Photoshop is very popular.  Acme Inc. Card Counter is not.
Photoshop has been prioritised because it is so popular, it is also 
affected by a LOT of bugs.  This adds up to 1+1=2 and nothing more.
Photoshop bugs are prioritised in exactly the same way all the other 
bugs are.



I don't think you paint the entire picture.


I don't think you can see the picture.



If a set of devs decide to work on getting a particular app working 
that's up to them, and we've already been over this too.


Obviously. I can't remember opposing that?


Who said you had?




Bares no relevance whatsoever to severity levels in Bugzilla.

Nothing does, does it?


Not to you, no.  Only what you think is right.



//Nicklas

Re: Severity levels

How many times does this have to be repeated?  Severity levels are NOT 
determined by how much a user wants the app to work.  They're just not, 
deal with it.

I have never said it is, either. 
I said it think it should be determined by how severe the user thinks 
it is(if devs then cares about it is another matter).
You seem to be convinced that all users are morons hyping their own stuff. 

If a set of devs decide to work on getting a particular app working
that's up to them, and we've already been over this too.

 Obviously. I can't remember opposing that?

Who said you had?

Why writing that we've had already been over it, then?!??

.etc
you can't see the picture 
.etc
Not to you, no.  Only what you think is right.
.etc

Huh?

This doesn't lead anywhere, you constantly misread me and I don't seem to 
understand what you are getting at.
For some reason, I seem to annoy the hell out if you. I really don't get it, it 
is not my intention. 
Do I have some kind of attitude I need to be aware of? I am not a native 
English speaker.

Anyway, it has been obvious from the start that you and I can't communicate. 
Therefore, I am backing out(hands in air) of this discussion before...uh.. 
after it has gotten out of hand.

//Nicklas

RE: Severity levels

Why should there be multiple support forums? 

Well, not forums, but as I said different lists for different kinds 
of applications(games/business/graphics), since they should(?) have related 
problems.
I would think so, anyway.

The wiki has _a lot_ of info, most of the time when bugs are closed invalid, 
wiki links are given to fix the problem. Again, wine _is_ an open source 
project. 
 If the wiki isn't good enough, add something.

I am talking about avoiding a bug being submitted at all. 
Maybe to organize how-to-run information.
Sure I could do a bit of that. It's like the idea you had about getting funding,
did they tell you to go do it all by yourself? 

How do you mean their priorities are important? It's an uncomfortable
truth, but users priorities aren't important, like has been said
dozens of times. Sure, we care about user's bugs, and want to fix
them. 
...
Users priorities probably affect what severity level they choose.
But as I said to Ken, I can't believe that all users are morons.
Anyway, regardless of their motives, I still think that they have to be 
included.
If not, the project will slowly drift away and turn into a toy nobody have any 
use for.

But every user also thinks *their* app is the most important
application to fix.

Actually, I can't believe they all are that way.
When I first posted a bug here on bugzilla some time ago, one of the first 
thing I
got was you telling me that there are other applications just as important as 
yours.
The reason in my case was that I completely misunderstood the severity 
instructions 
(I had the flu so I was a bit hazy) and mixed it up with the priority 
instructions.
I got going on your comment that Photoshop was not more critical than any other 
application, 
which I a far cry from getting pissed of about something with really few users.

Wine can't stop development on _everything_ just to get one user's
application running. Making user's arbitrary priorities the most
important would be doing this.

Good thing I didn't propose that then. :-)
I said it should be a part of the priority and a considerable one. Not the 
largest one. 
And I am not talking about users arbitrary priorities, just including 
more intuitive severity levels(good or bad) when making bug fixing priorities.

//Nicklas

RE: Severity levels

 How many times does this have to be repeated?  Severity levels are NOT 
 determined by how much a user wants the app to work.  They're just not, 
 deal with it.
 
 I have never said it is, either. 
 I said it think it should be determined by how severe the user thinks 
 it is(if devs then cares about it is another matter).

And you've already been told it shouldn't, and this has been explained 
to you.

snip waffle

Junk.

Explained to me?? ...this is just incredible. 
Regardless of what I have said, you have repeated almost the same things,
it's like you haven't been reading my posts!

Leave me alone, I want to talk to someone else.

//Nicklas

RE: Severity levels

I think this argument is circular...Wine has no shortage of bugs being
reported, we have plenty of new users reporting bugs, and new
developers contributing often. You're proposing adding an extra
severity rating that no developer will look at, and will only add to
confusion (users now have to decide *two* levels rather than one). It
won't add any benefit, other than possibly giving users a warm fuzzy
feeling that their bug is 'important' to them (which they can already
do with voting), but adds confusion, wasted time, and wasted effort.

Yes the voting! I had forgot about that!
Actually that pretty much...lessens many of my previous arguments.

Well, turns the into moot, really. 

I still think that the severity levels could be better with regards to UE 
though, 
but that seems less important now with the at least theorethical me too-power 
of voting.

Again, sorry for taking your time. Too bad nobody mentioned the voting earlier.

//Nicklas
PS.
I never proposed an extra severity flag, but to change it into something 
more intuitive for the user. 
I speculated that classification of bugs could be made anyway. 
DS.

RE: Severity levels

As I wrote in my earlier post, Austin told me about the voting functionality, 
and If that is considered when priorities are made, it is likely to keep
things pretty on track, making my proposed changes far less important.
I still think my thoughts aren't that off anyway, but now they feel a
bit more optional.

No, he's proposing to dump the developer-focused severity completely,
because component + priority should be good enough, and replace it
with ill-defined, ambiguous Low, Medium, High, Critical. Blockers and
metabugs would also disappear under his proposed model, it seems.
After all, what good are metabugs to users? ;)

Exactly. Ben's got it. :-)
But blockers and metabugs wouldn't disappear. 
They would only lose their special classification. 
They would likely have it's priorities set to 1 by the developer reviewing.
In what other way than they are highly prioritized are they different to any 
other bug?
Something that must be fixed, must be fixed, regardless.
To me, blocker is a class of bugs, not a level of severity. 
Mixing is up like is done now makes it:
a) more complicated for users. b) more difficult to severity in statistics.

ill-defined
I would go further than I'll-defined. I'd say non-defined.

The other things I talked about, drifting away from usability is a 
fairly rapid process(a few years) that I actually have experienced first hand
(well second hand, actually), and it wasn't pretty. 
You joke about it, but the worst thing about it is that because it really only
needs such a small skew to happen, it creeps up on you.
Because normal get fixed far more often than minor bugs.

 Firefox and IE have drastically different success/failure/issues 
 when running in Wine, as do MS Word and
 WordPerfect 

Yep, but I'd rather put I it like a Microsoft application has often other 
problems than externally developed applications(built-in vs using dll:s for 
everything).

Anyway, looking at the forums now, games and 3d applications DO usually have 
different issues than normal desktop applications.
It's more about controllers, DirectX and other stuff. 
And there are a LOT of posts. 30 new threads the last 24 hours. Lot's to wade 
through I you're only into D3D issues.
If it was different lists, people could become a little bit more specialized.

//Nicklas

RE: Severity levels

Just changing the default to normal should solve a lot of the problem; people 
are less likely to change the severity level if the one they're presented 
with looks reasonable. 
I think so too. Especially if the selected one, enhancement almost certainly 
is wrong.

I know what Major and Critical mean too, but I can live without being able to 
make that change myself if restricting it will help. There's always the 
comment field to state an opinion.
I agree here as well. I would also rename trivial to low, minor to 
medium and normal to high.
*ducks*

//Nicklas


-Original Message-
From: wine-devel-boun...@winehq.org on behalf of Rosanne DiMesio
Sent: Mon 2009-05-04 13:39
To: Austin English
Cc: wine-devel@winehq.org
Subject: Re: Severity levels
 
On Mon, 4 May 2009 00:31:09 -0500
Austin English austinengl...@gmail.com wrote:


 
  But how would the restriction work? Not that I'm likely to ever submit
  a Major or Critical bug report, but I know what they mean ;)
 
 
 I don't know if bugzilla supports that or not.
 
 But changing the default to normal is quick and easy.
 
 -- 

Just changing the default to normal should solve a lot of the problem; people 
are less likely to change the severity level if the one they're presented with 
looks reasonable. 

I know what Major and Critical mean too, but I can live without being able to 
make that change myself if restricting it will help. There's always the comment 
field to state an opinion. 


-- 
Rosanne DiMesio dime...@earthlink.net

RE: Severity levels


You're one guy against the world. So far, no one on this thread has
responded positively to your proposal to overhaul severities. I'd
suggest you stop acting like it's an inevitability

Ok then. 

Once again bugzilla is a developer's tool, not a collection of data
for users. We already have the Wiki, forums and AppDB satisfying the
users' needs.

Ok.

Point is that metabugs, though useless to users, are important for the
REAL target audience of bugzilla: developers.
Repeat after me:
 Bugzilla is there for the developers, not the users

Better not let them in then.

A user-centric focus on bug priorities simply would not work with a
project as large (massive?) as Wine is.

Repeat after me:
Nicklas Is not proposing a user centric focus, which would be insane, 
he is merely talking about weighing it in.
Nicklas Is not proposing a user centric focus, which would be insane, 
he is merely talking about weighing it in.
I have actually forgot how many times I have tried to say this.

Then they disappear. There would be no way to search for metabugs, for
example, whereas at the moment you can search for Blockers. There's no
point in keeping metabugs if there's no
...

I would search for priority 1 bugs. To be a priority 1 bug it would had 
to had been either a blocker or critial.
Metabugs...well, if they are used a lot maybe that will become a problem. 
But aren't using metabugs a bit wrong anyway?

You're now implying that all bugs should be given equal priority. 

No I am not. I rarely imply.

Some bugs *can't* be fixed without limitations lifted in other areas (e.g.
introduction of Xinput2). They could still be severe (mouse-related
bugs could easily attain Major severity) but be a low priority due to
forces outside of Wine.

Then severity would be critical and priority 4.


 Mixing is up like is done now makes it:
 a) more complicated for users. b) more difficult to severity in statistics.

a) is not a consideration for bugzilla. It has to be easy for the
developers that respond.
b) is nonsensical. We're talking about two very different forms of
statistics. Bugzilla is the place for developer-side severity (which
is what's in place now); forums and AppDB are the places for user-side
severity (which is what you're suggesting). By definition, there is no
way to gather statistics on one when the other is used.

a) You are right. Keep them users out of there.
b) I thought that priority was developer priority and severity was 
severity for the users. 


Please quote with context! And having no definitions of the severity
levels is just asking for trouble. Surely you realise that every user
will have a different opinion on how serious their bug is, and what
the boundaries for Low, Medium, High and Critical are, which
will likely vary greatly from what the developers responding to the
bugs think? Conflict between developers and users is bad, and having
real definitions of the severity levels allows the devs to say well,
your 'Critical' bug that has a simple but tedious workaround doesn't
fit the definition of Critical, so it's being downgraded to 'Minor'.

If one say severity is in usage context and priority is in big-picture
context there would be less conflicts. 


I can't tell what you're talking about here.

Ok. The same.

1) A few years is rapid?

Yes. I'd say so. I a large project's life, anyway.

2) Drifting away from usability when we've always (AFAIK) had the
current severity levels (but not necessarily the definitions), and
established that the system works well to assist developers
categorising the bugs?

Wine hasn't been used seriously by people until now. 
When something goes from being only a toy to a real too it brings changes.

3) Such a small skew, as in handing over full control over what
priority should be given to the bug to the users? And before you say
it's not full control, if it's not something that will seriously
influence the way bugs are prioritised, it's pointless to do such a
massive overhaul of the severity ratings.

Again, I disagree. Massive? Renaming some categorisations?

4) Normal getting fixed more than minor is a problem?
Yes, this can be a huge problem if minor consists of annoyances. 
In the end, one have a system that works, but in a very annoying way.

Applications still have to be treated on a per-app basis. Every app is
different, and in extreme cases different versions of the same app use
violently different API calls.
Yes, but I am talkic


Correct, games and 3D applications do tend to use DirectX, whereas
office applications don't (tend to). Well done, astute observation. It
doesn't mean that a joystick fix for GTA:San Andreas will work with
Gunmetal, or that a WineD3D patch for COD4 will improve performance in
Supreme Commander. They're all individuals! (Chorus: Yes, they're all
individuals!) They're all different! (Chorus: Yes, they're all
different!) (I'm not) (shhh)

I think you are just being negative, to be honest. 
So games aren't more like each others

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-07 Thread IneedAname

On Mon, 4 May 2009 22:12:04 +1000
Ben Klein shackl...@gmail.com wrote:

 2009/5/4 Ben Klein shackl...@gmail.com:
  Then they disappear. There would be no way to search for metabugs, for
  example, whereas at the moment you can search for Blockers. There's no
  point in keeping metabugs if there's no  
 
 SUSPENSE!
 
 Lost a chunk of line there.
 
 There's no point in keeping metabugs if there's no way to ...
 
 SUSPENSE!
 
 no way to distinguish them from regular bugs.

Wine does have meta bugs look at the application data base. Each application 
has a list of bugs that effect that program.
Why Wine does not use meta bugs in bugzilla is because they end up being Make 
my all programs work with wine! Now list.

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-07 Thread IneedAname

On Sun, 3 May 2009 23:31:45 -0400
Mike Kaplinskiy mike.kaplins...@gmail.com wrote:

 +1. Or just remove priorities for users altogether.

Looks like some one is thinking round here!
That gets my vote to.

RE: Severity levels

 
Guys, y'all are going in a circular argument. No need to cc wine-devel
on it anymore.

I am rather fed up with it as well, also I will soon not 
have any more time for it since I'll be going back to work tomorrow. I've had
stomach flu(!swine) the last week. Circular? More plain disagreement i'd say.

Let's work toward making normal the default level, and move on with our lives.

Yep. Let's do that. Let's aim for the stars.

Any developer/user focus for bugzilla argument is WAY beyond beating a
dead horse.

Ok.

RE: Severity levels

However, a developer should be aware of the impact on the user experience and
the user's determined severity of a problem.  

That has been my point all the time. I was told that the users perceptions 
were not important since, a least according what I understood, 
they could not be trusted to be objective in their classification.
Also, it was not very important to know their priorities anyway.

Users should not be determining this through the use of the severity and 
priority fields.  I have discussed the use of an impact field to have the 
user state what impact the problem has on their ability to use/install a 
particular application.

However, I thought adding a extra field would be too bold a proposition, so I
proposed to change the severity field instead(which I felt was unlinear 
anyway). 

Regarding the interface of the bug reporting I am also with you. 
It is simply not simple enough for normal users. Too many knobs.

The problem is that it is felt that enough bugs are reported anyway, and 
that therefore, no improvements are needed. 
Maybe that's correct, but I just can't help to think it is a bit of a strange 
mindset.

//Nicklas

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-07 Thread Austin English

2009/5/3 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
 Explained to me?? ...this is just incredible.
 Regardless of what I have said, you have repeated almost the same things,
 it's like you haven't been reading my posts!

 Leave me alone, I want to talk to someone else.

No offense, but you should probably take the lack of (repeated)
responses as a sign.

You've been answered several times by several people, and the answer
has been (mostly) the same.

Bugzilla is a developer's tool, with bugs reported by users. Severity
levels are there for how they affect Wine *overall*, not the user
experience. Such things belong in the AppDB/etc., not bugzilla.

Again, no offense, but you're relatively unknown to the Wine project.
Looking for your name in the git log shows no records. The only place
I recognize your name from is this thread and from bugzilla bugs.
Trying to tell all of Wine's developers that the way they've been
handling bug reports has been wrong for years is a bit pompous.

Granted, I'm not saying it can't be improved. Surely it can. But, as
has been said before, Bugzilla is there for developers, not user's.

Lastly, as I said before, I encourage you to subscribe to
wine-bugs/patches/devel/users and keep up with everything going on in
wine. See how many bug reports we have, what they describe, and the
quality of them. It helps to have experience seeing these bug reports
before arbitrarily saying how the system should be changed.

The horse has been beaten way past the point of Jell-O. Can we put
this to a rest, please?

-- 
-Austin

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-07 Thread richardvo...@gmail.com

2009/5/7 Austin English austinengl...@gmail.com

 2009/5/3 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
  Explained to me?? ...this is just incredible.
  Regardless of what I have said, you have repeated almost the same things,
  it's like you haven't been reading my posts!
 
  Leave me alone, I want to talk to someone else.

 No offense, but you should probably take the lack of (repeated)
 responses as a sign.

 You've been answered several times by several people, and the answer
 has been (mostly) the same.

 Bugzilla is a developer's tool, with bugs reported by users. Severity
 levels are there for how they affect Wine *overall*, not the user
 experience. Such things belong in the AppDB/etc., not bugzilla.


Having it in a field in bugzilla with a list of options is potentially a lot
better than expecting users to enter the information in the description
without being prompted.  I'd suggest:

Application can't start.
(default) Something I need to do is broken, but enough of the app still
works to be useful for other tasks (e.g. a word processor with broken
equation editor).
The app is totally useless (e.g. a word processor with broken Open  Save
dialogs).
Part of the app is broken but I can work around the problems.

along with instructions to file installer bugs under Installer for XYZ
because installers have the same potential for partial breakage (can't
select install directory vs shows negative free space and refuses to install
at all)

This was already suggested, but the options addressed multiple orthogonal
issues (how usable is the app vs what kind of breakage) which someone
pointed out would be even more confusing.  Keep the what broke in the
description where users will naturally report it, and provide only an impact
(hey that might not be a bad name for the field -- impact) level in a new
dropdown list.

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-07 Thread Ben Klein

2009/5/8 richardvo...@gmail.com richardvo...@gmail.com:
 2009/5/7 Austin English austinengl...@gmail.com

 2009/5/3 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
  Explained to me?? ...this is just incredible.
  Regardless of what I have said, you have repeated almost the same
  things,
  it's like you haven't been reading my posts!

Or that you're not reading other people's posts, like every time they
mention the phrase developers, not users, you assume the entire post
is irrelevant to the discussion.

  Leave me alone, I want to talk to someone else.

I've said it before, you're one man against the world in this argument.

 Bugzilla is a developer's tool, with bugs reported by users. Severity
 levels are there for how they affect Wine *overall*, not the user
 experience. Such things belong in the AppDB/etc., not bugzilla.

 Having it in a field in bugzilla with a list of options is potentially a lot
 better than expecting users to enter the information in the description
 without being prompted.  I'd suggest:
 Application can't start.
 (default) Something I need to do is broken, but enough of the app still
 works to be useful for other tasks (e.g. a word processor with broken
 equation editor).
 The app is totally useless (e.g. a word processor with broken Open  Save
 dialogs).
 Part of the app is broken but I can work around the problems.

This is not very useful to the people who matter on bugzilla
(developers). Something is broken is too close to The app is
useless (at best these would be Minor and Normal bugs, at worst both
Normal) and Part of the app is broken is exactly the same as
Something is broken except a workaround is present (this is
guaranteed to be Minor).

Users need to provide much more detail to their bug descriptions than
this. Adding a field that describes the problem in a vague way will
encourage users to minimise their descriptions (BAD). Imagine:
I already said that something is broken, why are you asking for more
information? FIX IT! It's really important! I need it to live!

If any improvement can be made to the bug submission system, it would
be to encourage users to provide *more* descriptive detail (especially
for steps taken to reproduce the bug) in their initial report. Any
suggestion for adding or modifying a field to indicate Impact on user
experience will not affect that.

 along with instructions to file installer bugs under Installer for XYZ
 because installers have the same potential for partial breakage (can't
 select install directory vs shows negative free space and refuses to install
 at all)
 This was already suggested, but the options addressed multiple orthogonal
 issues (how usable is the app vs what kind of breakage) which someone
 pointed out would be even more confusing.  Keep the what broke in the
 description where users will naturally report it, and provide only an impact
 (hey that might not be a bad name for the field -- impact) level in a new
 dropdown list.

It's been said before: bugzilla is not the place for this type of
thing. The impact on user experience is not a factor in determining
bug priorities, nor will it ever be. Remember, WineHQ is not a
company, Wine is not proprietary, so Wine does not have to behave like
a commercial product. If someone is willing to work on a bug, then
patches will get submitted and reviewed. If the patches are
well-formed and functional, and don't cause obvious regressions, then
the patches are committed and the bug fixed. That's how collaborative
open-source development works, especially in such massive projects as
Wine.

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-07 Thread James McKenzie

IneedAname wrote:

 Wine does have meta bugs look at the application data base. Each application 
 has a list of bugs that effect that program.
   
I think that you missed what a meta-bug is in the Bugzilla sense.  A
meta-bug would collect all of the applications affected by a particular
problem, we do that by adding them to the comments area and closing out
the duplicates.
 Why Wine does not use meta bugs in bugzilla is because they end up being 
 Make my all programs work with wine! Now list.

   
Either that, or they get abused by folks adding bugs that have NOTHING
to do with the original bug.

In any case, meta-bugs are not allowed in Bugzilla, period.

James McKenzie

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-05 Thread Paul TBBle Hampson

On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 02:39:28PM -0500, Austin English wrote:
 2009/5/4 James Mckenzie jjmckenzi...@earthlink.net:
 One question:  Does Bugzilla have a place for user's to place the
 Impact on their ability to use a Windows program?  This is much
 different than the priority and severity fields.

 No, but it is not important for bugzilla. That information belongs in
 the AppDB, which allows for this, with the application ratings.

It'd be handy if bug links in AppDB allowed some kind of indication of
the problem it causes or at least the severity thereof.

I've got a whole bunch of bugs linked from Warhammer Online which have
really unuseful bug titles, causing readers of the page to end up
reporting the same things in the comments.

There's prolly an issue as well in the bug report naming, it seems that
Wine doesn't have a strong culture of renaming bugs when they've been
diagnosed. (Bug 13335 is a good example of this, I feel. A user pointed
out to me the other day that he wasn't running Warcraft 3 when I
suggested that it was the problem he was having. There's another bug
which refers specifically to Steam in the bug title.)

I've added a Note to the WAR AppDB page which describes symptoms and
ties them to linked bugs to try and alleviate this, but it'd be nice if
the disconnect wasn't there.

-- 
---
Paul TBBle Hampson, B.Sc, LPI, MCSE
Very-later-year Asian Studies student, ANU
The Boss, Bubblesworth Pty Ltd (ABN: 51 095 284 361)
paul.hamp...@pobox.com

Of course Pacman didn't influence us as kids. If it did,
we'd be running around in darkened rooms, popping pills and
listening to repetitive music.
 -- Marcus Brigstocke
http://www.marcusbrigstocke.com/pacman.asp

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/
---


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Re: Severity levels

2009-05-05 Thread Darragh Bailey

On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 11:24:58AM -0700, James Mckenzie wrote:
 Ben Klein wrote on May 4th:
 
 Final post from me.
 
 2009/5/5 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
  b) I thought that priority was developer priority and severity was
  severity for the users.
 
 Nope. Both for the benefit of developers, hence why they're both on bugzilla.
 
 
 One question:  Does Bugzilla have a place for user's to place the Impact on 
 their ability to use a Windows program?  This is much different than the 
 priority and severity fields.
 
 James McKenzie

In catching up on this long discussion, this is the first post that I've
seen that actually comes close to pin-pointing what is being requested.

Current:
Severity = messure of bug impact on wine

Requested:
Severity = message of bug impact on application running in wine


IMHO the bugzilla severity field is not the right place to measure 
impact to other applications of bugs in the current development. 
Attempting to track that type of information in the severity field 
will always lead to confusion and problems.

A more logical approach would be to either add a different field or use
tags to track the impact on the affected app.


-- 
Darragh

Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-05 Thread Austin English

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:42 AM, Darragh Bailey
fe...@compsoc.nuigalway.ie wrote:
 In catching up on this long discussion, this is the first post that I've
 seen that actually comes close to pin-pointing what is being requested.

 Current:
 Severity = messure of bug impact on wine

 Requested:
 Severity = message of bug impact on application running in wine


 IMHO the bugzilla severity field is not the right place to measure
 impact to other applications of bugs in the current development.
 Attempting to track that type of information in the severity field
 will always lead to confusion and problems.

 A more logical approach would be to either add a different field or use
 tags to track the impact on the affected app.

Again, bugzilla is a developer's tool.

That sort of information belongs in the AppDB, not bugzilla.

-- 
-Austin

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-05 Thread James Mckenzie

Darragh Bailey wrote on May 5th:

On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 11:24:58AM -0700, James Mckenzie wrote:
 Ben Klein wrote on May 4th:
 
 Final post from me.
 
 2009/5/5 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
  b) I thought that priority was developer priority and severity was
  severity for the users.
 
 Nope. Both for the benefit of developers, hence why they're both on 
 bugzilla.
 
 
 One question:  Does Bugzilla have a place for user's to place the Impact on 
 their ability to use a Windows program?  This is much different than the 
 priority and severity fields.
 
 James McKenzie

In catching up on this long discussion, this is the first post that I've
seen that actually comes close to pin-pointing what is being requested.

Current:
Severity = messure of bug impact on wine

Requested:
Severity = message of bug impact on application running in wine


IMHO the bugzilla severity field is not the right place to measure 
impact to other applications of bugs in the current development. 
Attempting to track that type of information in the severity field 
will always lead to confusion and problems.

As a reminder, Bugzilla is for developers to work in user discovered issues.

The Severity field, as it is, is correct for developer/triage evaluation of 
discovered issues.  It should not be changed.

However, a developer should be aware of the impact on the user experience and
the user's determined severity of a problem.  Users should not be determining
this through the use of the severity and priority fields.  I have discussed
the use of an impact field to have the user state what impact the problem has
on their ability to use/install a particular application.  Some problems have
a more severe impact on certain applications.  The use of metabugs to follow
what applications are affected is HIGHLY discouraged.
The users of Wine should be able to state, in one place, what the bug is, what
its impact to them is and the status of repair and/or workaround(s) for the bug
is.  The Applications Database is the location where a user can input what they
found through use of Wine by Linux/UNIX version/distribution and Wine version.

Bug reports should reside in Bugzilla and users should be able to input bug 
reports quickly (10 minutes for a non-English speaking user.)  This seems 
to not be happening at the present time and users are confused by the Bugzilla
interface and fields presented to them.  We should not rely on the ability
for users to read and understand what field does what but only present to them
fields needed to be filled out by users when they submit a bug report.  Since
the severity and priority fields are developer only, they should not be present.
The proposed impact field should be a drop down list only and present common 
impacts encountered by users, such as Unable to Install Application, 
Unable to run application,Screen is unreadable,Text not appearing on 
screen,Graphics are garbled.  This allows the user to provide input 
and allow the triage team to provide feedback to the user as well as
assign appropriate severity and priorities to bug reports.  

Please advise if this is what the project desires to do.  Again, this is to
improve the user experience for the unexperienced (nOOb) Wine user.  Experienced
users do not have these difficulties but this takes time away from developers
and triage teams to provide user education.

James McKenzie

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-05 Thread Rosanne DiMesio

On Tue, 5 May 2009 13:28:45 -0400 (EDT)
James Mckenzie jjmckenzi...@earthlink.net wrote:


 The proposed impact field should be a drop down list only and present common 
 impacts encountered by users, such as Unable to Install Application, 
 Unable to run application,Screen is unreadable,Text not appearing on 
 screen,Graphics are garbled.  

If I can't install or run an app because text is not appearing on the screen 
and the graphics are garbled--in other words, the screen is unreadable--which 
item am I supposed to select? Or at the other extreme--what if my problem 
doesn't seem to match anything on the predefined list?

This allows the user to provide input 
 and allow the triage team to provide feedback to the user as well as
 assign appropriate severity and priorities to bug reports.  
 

There's already a field that does exactly that: the description. It allows 
users to describe the problem in as much detail as they wish, including its 
impact, and unlike a drop-down list, is not limited to common issues. I don't 
see what an additional field to repeat this information in vague terms will do 
to help anyone. 

-- 
Rosanne DiMesio dime...@earthlink.net

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-05 Thread Ben Klein

2009/5/5 Paul TBBle Hampson paul.hamp...@pobox.com:
 I've got a whole bunch of bugs linked from Warhammer Online which have
 really unuseful bug titles, causing readers of the page to end up
 reporting the same things in the comments.

Bug titles can and should be changed.

2009/5/6 James Mckenzie jjmckenzi...@earthlink.net:
 Since the severity and priority fields are developer only, they should not
 be present.

Developers use bugzilla too. Any restriction we put on casual users
will affect experienced users, unless there is some flag in each
user's profile for whether the fields will be visible.

Big question is, is it THAT much of a problem? I vote no.

2009/5/6 Rosanne DiMesio dime...@earthlink.net:
This allows the user to provide input
 and allow the triage team to provide feedback to the user as well as
 assign appropriate severity and priorities to bug reports.


 There's already a field that does exactly that: the description. It allows 
 users to describe the problem in as much detail as they wish, including its 
 impact, and unlike a drop-down list, is not limited to common issues. I don't 
 see what an additional field to repeat this information in vague terms will 
 do to help anyone.

+1. Also note that vague or misleading descriptions are common, users
often don't respond to bugs with more information, and in extreme
cases, bugs get closed due to a lack of activity. Adding a field that
basically says it's broken (in a variety of weird and wonderful
ways) won't help with improving descriptions.

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-04 Thread Rosanne DiMesio

On Mon, 4 May 2009 00:31:09 -0500
Austin English austinengl...@gmail.com wrote:


 
  But how would the restriction work? Not that I'm likely to ever submit
  a Major or Critical bug report, but I know what they mean ;)
 
 
 I don't know if bugzilla supports that or not.
 
 But changing the default to normal is quick and easy.
 
 -- 

Just changing the default to normal should solve a lot of the problem; people 
are less likely to change the severity level if the one they're presented with 
looks reasonable. 

I know what Major and Critical mean too, but I can live without being able to 
make that change myself if restricting it will help. There's always the comment 
field to state an opinion. 


-- 
Rosanne DiMesio dime...@earthlink.net

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-04 Thread Ben Klein

2009/5/4 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
 As I wrote in my earlier post, Austin told me about the voting functionality,
 and If that is considered when priorities are made, it is likely to keep
 things pretty on track, making my proposed changes far less important.
 I still think my thoughts aren't that off anyway, but now they feel a
 bit more optional.

You're one guy against the world. So far, no one on this thread has
responded positively to your proposal to overhaul severities. I'd
suggest you stop acting like it's an inevitability

Once again bugzilla is a developer's tool, not a collection of data
for users. We already have the Wiki, forums and AppDB satisfying the
users' needs.

No, he's proposing to dump the developer-focused severity completely,
because component + priority should be good enough, and replace it
with ill-defined, ambiguous Low, Medium, High, Critical. Blockers and
metabugs would also disappear under his proposed model, it seems.
After all, what good are metabugs to users? ;)

 Exactly. Ben's got it. :-)

Point is that metabugs, though useless to users, are important for the
REAL target audience of bugzilla: developers.

Repeat after me:
* Bugzilla is there for the developers, not the users
* Bugzilla's target audience is the developers, not the users
* Bugzilla's target demographic is the developers, not the users
* Bugzilla will fly up Tokyo Tower for the developers, not the users
* Bugs on bugzilla are examined, responded and fixed to by developers, not users
(OK, there are cases where that last one is false, but wherever code
is required ...)

A user-centric focus on bug priorities simply would not work with a
project as large (massive?) as Wine is.

 But blockers and metabugs wouldn't disappear.
 They would only lose their special classification.

Then they disappear. There would be no way to search for metabugs, for
example, whereas at the moment you can search for Blockers. There's no
point in keeping metabugs if there's no

 They would likely have it's priorities set to 1 by the developer reviewing.
 In what other way than they are highly prioritized are they different to any 
 other bug?
 Something that must be fixed, must be fixed, regardless.

You're now implying that all bugs should be given equal priority. Some
bugs *can't* be fixed without limitations lifted in other areas (e.g.
introduction of Xinput2). They could still be severe (mouse-related
bugs could easily attain Major severity) but be a low priority due to
forces outside of Wine.

 To me, blocker is a class of bugs, not a level of severity.

Agreed, Blocker is a class of bugs, but severity is a neat way to keep
track of it. You can't have a minor or trivial blocker; all blockers
block development in their area.

 Mixing is up like is done now makes it:
 a) more complicated for users. b) more difficult to severity in statistics.

a) is not a consideration for bugzilla. It has to be easy for the
developers that respond.
b) is nonsensical. We're talking about two very different forms of
statistics. Bugzilla is the place for developer-side severity (which
is what's in place now); forums and AppDB are the places for user-side
severity (which is what you're suggesting). By definition, there is no
way to gather statistics on one when the other is used.

ill-defined
 I would go further than I'll-defined. I'd say non-defined.

Please quote with context! And having no definitions of the severity
levels is just asking for trouble. Surely you realise that every user
will have a different opinion on how serious their bug is, and what
the boundaries for Low, Medium, High and Critical are, which
will likely vary greatly from what the developers responding to the
bugs think? Conflict between developers and users is bad, and having
real definitions of the severity levels allows the devs to say well,
your 'Critical' bug that has a simple but tedious workaround doesn't
fit the definition of Critical, so it's being downgraded to 'Minor'.

 The other things I talked about, drifting away from usability is a
 fairly rapid process(a few years) that I actually have experienced first hand
 (well second hand, actually), and it wasn't pretty.
 You joke about it, but the worst thing about it is that because it really only
 needs such a small skew to happen, it creeps up on you.
 Because normal get fixed far more often than minor bugs.

I can't tell what you're talking about here.
1) A few years is rapid?
2) Drifting away from usability when we've always (AFAIK) had the
current severity levels (but not necessarily the definitions), and
established that the system works well to assist developers
categorising the bugs?
3) Such a small skew, as in handing over full control over what
priority should be given to the bug to the users? And before you say
it's not full control, if it's not something that will seriously
influence the way bugs are prioritised, it's pointless to do such a
massive overhaul of the severity ratings.
4)

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-04 Thread Ben Klein

2009/5/4 Ben Klein shackl...@gmail.com:
 Then they disappear. There would be no way to search for metabugs, for
 example, whereas at the moment you can search for Blockers. There's no
 point in keeping metabugs if there's no

SUSPENSE!

Lost a chunk of line there.

There's no point in keeping metabugs if there's no way to ...

SUSPENSE!

no way to distinguish them from regular bugs.

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-04 Thread Ben Klein

Final post from me.

2009/5/5 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
 b) I thought that priority was developer priority and severity was
 severity for the users.

Nope. Both for the benefit of developers, hence why they're both on bugzilla.

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-04 Thread Austin English

Guys, y'all are going in a circular argument. No need to cc wine-devel
on it anymore.

Let's work toward making normal the default level, and move on with our lives.

Any developer/user focus for bugzilla argument is WAY beyond beating a
dead horse.

--
-Austin

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-04 Thread Paul TBBle Hampson

On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 10:12:04PM +1000, Ben Klein wrote:
 2009/5/4 Ben Klein shackl...@gmail.com:
 Then they disappear. There would be no way to search for metabugs, for
 example, whereas at the moment you can search for Blockers. There's no
 point in keeping metabugs if there's no
 There's no point in keeping metabugs if there's no way to ...
 no way to distinguish them from regular bugs.

I was under the impression that Wine didn't want metabugs. I'm sure I've
seem comments to that effect in Bugzilla itself...

-- 
---
Paul TBBle Hampson, B.Sc, LPI, MCSE
Very-later-year Asian Studies student, ANU
The Boss, Bubblesworth Pty Ltd (ABN: 51 095 284 361)
paul.hamp...@pobox.com

Of course Pacman didn't influence us as kids. If it did,
we'd be running around in darkened rooms, popping pills and
listening to repetitive music.
 -- Marcus Brigstocke
http://www.marcusbrigstocke.com/pacman.asp

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/
---


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Re: Severity levels

2009-05-04 Thread James Mckenzie

Ben Klein wrote on May 4th:

Final post from me.

2009/5/5 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
 b) I thought that priority was developer priority and severity was
 severity for the users.

Nope. Both for the benefit of developers, hence why they're both on bugzilla.


One question:  Does Bugzilla have a place for user's to place the Impact on 
their ability to use a Windows program?  This is much different than the 
priority and severity fields.

James McKenzie

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-04 Thread Ken Sharp




James Mckenzie wrote:


One question:  Does Bugzilla have a place for user's to place the Impact on 
their ability to use a Windows program?  This is much different than the 
priority and severity fields.


Yes, here:
http://bugs.winehq.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html#bug_severity

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-04 Thread Austin English

2009/5/4 James Mckenzie jjmckenzi...@earthlink.net:
 Ben Klein wrote on May 4th:

Final post from me.

2009/5/5 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
 b) I thought that priority was developer priority and severity was
 severity for the users.

Nope. Both for the benefit of developers, hence why they're both on bugzilla.


 One question:  Does Bugzilla have a place for user's to place the Impact on 
 their ability to use a Windows program?  This is much different than the 
 priority and severity fields.

No, but it is not important for bugzilla. That information belongs in
the AppDB, which allows for this, with the application ratings.

-- 
-Austin

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-04 Thread John Klehm

Roderick Colenbrander and I were talking about the severity levels on
irc the other day.  We tried to outline the existing severity process
that seems to be in use (not what is neccesarily listed in bugzilla)
and came up with the following levels of bug severity:

* normal
* major (release level, e.g. dib engine, 64 bit support, usb, etc)
* blocker (compile failure, severe wine crash, system crash due to
triggering driver bugs)

As far as I can see that's what the current usage of serverity is in bugzilla.

Other thoughts during our discussion were that perhaps assignee should
be the one that can change the severity rather than reporter.

Cheers,
--John Klehm

RE: Severity levels

I am not sure that common sense is the issue. I think it is a question of who 
you are and what you know. 
Among the ones submitting bugs now is a quickly rising percentage of 
normal-to-advanced end users, and that percentage is likely to rise even 
further, as Linux adoption rates increase. 10 million desktops is the last 
number I've heard..and people are learning how to report problems. Hell, my 
mom(77 years old) reported a bug a while ago.

My point is, why not adapt the severity levels to the competence level of the 
submitters instead of having to correct them all the time, creating badwill?

Can't the three highest severity levels just be removed? Are they relevant? 

1. Blocker  Blocks development and/or testing work

- Is this even possible?

2. Critical Critical problem that prevents all applications from working

- Possible, if everyone stopped testing code completely, and also unlikely to 
be reported by a user. 

3. MajorMajor loss of functionality for a wide range of applications

- Isn't this just all bugs that has more than $arbitrary_number of applications 
linked to them? An aggregate, rather than a level?


Then, the severity(or impact) levels could be:

Critical
High
Medium
Low

This is way easier to understand for normal people.  
Also, the definition of each level should not be all that clear(except maybe 
critical) either, the levels will be discussed anyway, so it is easier to 
motivate for the developers to grade down a bug without too much discussion. 
Because the more people start using wine to actually make a living, the more 
important it will be to them.
One would think that vague levels would create more discussion, but according 
to my experience, and with end-users, it seems to work the other way. 

And yes, I know that the bug reporting system is used by the developers 
internally as well, but do you really use the first two levels so often that 
you need them(I hope not)? 

//Nicklas

RE: Severity levels

Ok, I have made better posts.

 1. Blocker   Blocks development and/or testing work
 
 - Is this even possible?

Yes.

I am sorry. Of course it is possible to have these problems. I thought it meant 
that it blocks ALL 
development and/or testing work(since it is above critical). 
In the list, there are mostly platform-specific issues. My mistake. 

 2. Critical  Critical problem that prevents all applications from working
 
 - Possible, if everyone stopped testing code completely, and also unlikely 
 to be reported by a user. 

No, critical bugs are usually opened by non-Linux users.

Here I did search, and actually, most bugs have linux as an operating system 
so I couldn't come to that conclusion.
Anyway, I get your point.  Still don't really see why this is a separate 
severity level, though. 
Wouldn't this be a wineloader component or something?

 3. Major Major loss of functionality for a wide range of applications
 
 - Isn't this just all bugs that has more than $arbitrary_number of 
 applications linked to them? An aggregate, 
 rather than a level?

No, it's actually what it say, a WIDE RANGE of applications.

Ok..I just thought that wide range could be translated into a number or 
percentage instead of an expression. 
I thought the opposite way...but couldn't possibly all bugs in wine affect a 
wide range of appliacations?

 Bugzilla is to track bugs, it's not a user support forum, and the bugs 
 should be classified as the dev's want them to be classified.

No, I know it is not a support forum(Is users using is as such a big problem?).
But it is nevertheless an interface towards the users of wine. A place they go 
to when all else has failed(hopefully). 
And as such it is utterly confusing(for them) and already leads to pointless 
misunderstandings and frustrations 
regarding, for example, the severity flag.

Anyway. I can't help but feel that we are on completely different pages in many 
ways. 
I think that the users should have quite a say with regards to how important a 
bug is, because for every user 
putting in the (considerable for a user) effort of reporting a bug, there are 
dozens that don't say anything at all. 
In wine's case, because of it's size, this might actually be hundreds. It's 
badwill.

So currently, there is no way at all for users to influence these priorities. 
To me, user priorities would be a 
considerable factor, obviously not the only one, but considerable. 
I know that wine, to a large extent, Is maintained by unpaid individuals(like 
myself) that want to prioritize themselves. 
I don't want to take that right away from them, I just feel that it's bad 
practice to disregard the users' priorities.

//Nicklas

PS.
Your line length needs fixing.
I have to admit I sent this using my employers horrible web mail (no idea why 
it says 6.5 though, think it is 2005). 
We will pretty soon exchange it, though. :-)
DS.

RE: Severity levels

Wine is meant to support _ALL_ windows applications. It doesn't give
priority to 'server' or 'desktop' applications (there is no
difference, really), but instead tries to make all of them work.

Yes, but I wasn't talking about server applikations per se, but that the 
severity levels would be perfect for a server application, hence skewing the 
priorities away from GUI and other, more soft, user experience issues.

I am not specifically talking about Photoshop, either. I am talking about all 
GUI-centered applications.

Yes, I read about that, huge kudos to Google for still being benevolent(and Dan 
of course).

But. Listen. I am not here to try and get Photoshop CS 4 fixed, that's already 
done, it works great for me. It's just that I have some ideas on what I would 
think would be simple but effective changes of the bug reporting and don't give 
up easily. :-)

//Nicklas

RE: Severity levels

The normal user doesn't even understand that the definitions should be read, 
most people think they know what trivial, minor,normal,major means 
anyway. I actually discussed this with some friends recently. I just think that 
it could be more user-oriented.

Non-technical? Posting on and following the wine-devel list? Severity levels 
perfectly clear? 
I must say, you've got some serious credibility issues.. :-)

//Nicklas


-Original Message-
From: Rosanne DiMesio [mailto:dime...@earthlink.net]
Sent: Sat 2009-05-02 19:09
To: Ken Sharp
Cc: Nicklas Börjesson; wine-devel@winehq.org
Subject: Re: Severity levels
 
  This is way easier to understand for normal people.  
 

Speaking as a non-technical user who does file bug reports now and then, I have 
always found the definitions of the severity levels to be perfectly clear, even 
when I was new to Wine, and from what I've seen, when a reporter sets the wrong 
severity level, it's usually because they didn't bother to read the definitions 
in the first place. 

-- 
Rosanne DiMesio dime...@earthlink.net

RE: Severity levels

Not applications, issues.
My point is that user experience issues gets a lower severity than they should.
Let's take photoshop CS 4 with two old but relevant actual issues as an 
example. 
1. There is a problem with the text tool functionality, it did not work. 
Everything else works, though.
2. There are serious graphics problems, huge artifacts, the entire application 
is almost unworkable under Gnome.

With the current severity levels(without common sense), example 1 gets higher 
priority, which I think is wrong.

//Nicklas

PS.
Yes I know the actual issue turned out to be a configuration thing. But that's 
not the point.
DS.

-Original Message-
From: Austin English [mailto:austinengl...@gmail.com]
Sent: Sat 2009-05-02 20:56
To: Nicklas Börjesson
Cc: wine-devel@winehq.org
Subject: Re: Severity levels
 
2009/5/2 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
Wine is meant to support _ALL_ windows applications. It doesn't give
priority to 'server' or 'desktop' applications (there is no
difference, really), but instead tries to make all of them work.

 Yes, but I wasn't talking about server applikations per se, but that the 
 severity levels would be perfect for a server application, hence skewing the 
 priorities away from GUI and other, more soft, user experience issues.

I'm curious what non-gui applications you're talking about in regards to wine.

-- 
-Austin

RE: Severity levels


The problem is, however, that many of those problems only break an
application or two. What is a blocker for Photoshop isn't a blocker
for World of Warcraft or Microsoft Office, for example.

You mean because Photoshop often use the more obscure parts of the APIs?
Otherwise bugs in GUI shouldn't be less contagious than other kinds.
Unless one regards UE issues as less severe, that is... :-)
Anyway, I fail to see how this connects to the severity level discussion?

Please bottom post on wine mailing lists.

Yep. But I was top posted earlier so I got confused. 
Also I am in a crappy exchange web mail client..
I hope you managed to read this post better.

//Nicklas

RE: Severity levels


I think middle-aged college English teacher who couldn't code if her life 
depended on it counts as non-technical. :-) The only thing that sets me 
apart from most users is the fact that I actually do RTFM, but that's just 
because I'm one of those eccentric academics who thinks reading is a really 
good way to learn. 

Reading? But you are going to end up all cross-eyed, dear?
Everything I know about programming I have learned from stories my parents told 
me as a kid.
And they heard them from their parents and now I am passing it on to my 3-year 
old daughter.
She is very much into the older Windows API:s right now and just wants to hear 
that story 
about oleacc.dll again and again and again.

RE: Severity levels

Ok..you seem to have misunderstood the tone in my mail.

Without common sense, all bug reports would be Enhancement requests,
or Critical, depending on how arrogant the reporter is. Common sense
must *always* be applied.

I should be needed to be applied only to the least possible amount. One should 
never have to think for no reason.
The more common sense that have to be applied to make something work, the 
less something works by itself.
Of course, you can't completely do away with common sense. I said without 
common sense to point out the problems.
And, well, some have less common sense. Or a different kind. Or are just tired, 
stressed out or something else. 
So, the less common sense needed, the better, IMO. My other point is that 
reporters are like to become less technical.

 Oh, and use Reply to all so you stop just hitting Austin with responses!

Huh? The mailing list is cc:d, Isn't that enough? I mean, it looks on you mail 
you mailed me and cc:d?
Doesn't the mailing list propagate messages if it is only cc:d?
Have I misunderstood something? In that case I am sorry.

Rosanne is an AppDB admin. What contribution have you made to Wine?
Out of you and her, I don't think her credibility can be called in to
question. And before you ask, I'm also an AppDB admin, I package the
Debian packages for WineHQ, and have had a patch committed to Wine.
I'll even send you the git revision code if you can't find it! :D

Note that like Rosanne, even when I was a newbie submitting bug
reports, I understood the severity levels because I read the
descriptions. The descriptions are fine as is, with the possible
exception of Blocker (people submit Blocker bugs for Normal
issues because it blocks the thing that they're doing).

It's seems you missed the :-). I put in the end of the sentence on 
credibility. 
It was a joke and she seems to have took it that way, since she joked back.
With regards to the severity levels, to me, none of them means what one would 
think they do intuitively.

//Nicklas

PS.
I am sorry if I have broken the rules of this list, but I thought I followed 
them. 
I hope you don't let this detract from my arguments.
DS.

Re: Severity levels

2009/5/2 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
 2. Critical  Critical problem that prevents all applications from working

 - Possible, if everyone stopped testing code completely, and also unlikely 
 to be reported by a user.

No, critical bugs are usually opened by non-Linux users.

 Here I did search, and actually, most bugs have linux as an operating 
 system so I couldn't come to that conclusion.
 Anyway, I get your point.  Still don't really see why this is a separate 
 severity level, though.
 Wouldn't this be a wineloader component or something?

Not all critical bugs are caused by the loader. It's possible for
d3d/ole/etc. to have a similar effect.

 3. Major     Major loss of functionality for a wide range of applications

 - Isn't this just all bugs that has more than $arbitrary_number of 
 applications linked to them? An aggregate,
 rather than a level?

No, it's actually what it say, a WIDE RANGE of applications.

 Ok..I just thought that wide range could be translated into a number or 
 percentage instead of an expression.
 I thought the opposite way...but couldn't possibly all bugs in wine affect a 
 wide range of appliacations?

Sure, it's just not as common as you'd think.

 Bugzilla is to track bugs, it's not a user support forum, and the bugs
 should be classified as the dev's want them to be classified.

 No, I know it is not a support forum(Is users using is as such a big 
 problem?).

You'd be surprised...

 But it is nevertheless an interface towards the users of wine. A place they 
 go to when all else has failed(hopefully).
 And as such it is utterly confusing(for them) and already leads to pointless 
 misunderstandings and frustrations
 regarding, for example, the severity flag.

 Anyway. I can't help but feel that we are on completely different pages in 
 many ways.
 I think that the users should have quite a say with regards to how important 
 a bug is, because for every user
 putting in the (considerable for a user) effort of reporting a bug, there are 
 dozens that don't say anything at all.
 In wine's case, because of it's size, this might actually be hundreds. It's 
 badwill.

 So currently, there is no way at all for users to influence these priorities. 
 To me, user priorities would be a
 considerable factor, obviously not the only one, but considerable.
 I know that wine, to a large extent, Is maintained by unpaid individuals(like 
 myself) that want to prioritize themselves.
 I don't want to take that right away from them, I just feel that it's bad 
 practice to disregard the users' priorities.

Keep in mind, most developers are unpaid as well. They're the ones
fixing the bugs, not users. While users are important, no work gets
done without the developers. Developers have no way to prioritize one
user over another. The best way to prioritize *your* bug is to make a
*good* bug report. Make sure all needed information is included. Get a
testcase if possible. Provide the needed traces, etc. Even better, is
to write a patch yourself. The source is there, and there is nothing
stopping you from writing a patch.

As a developer that spends more time testing than coding/etc., I see
both sides of the coin. But keep in mind, that there are thousands of
users, and just as many applications. Prioritizing one
user/application over the other is almost always impossible, for
obvious reasons. Picking your bug instead of Bob's bug just pisses Bob
off, and vice versa. So how is most bug fixing done? Developers big
bugs that interest them, that affect them personally, or that have
good bug reports, which makes it fixing it much easier on them.

-- 
-Austin

Re: Severity levels

2009/5/3 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
 Ok..you seem to have misunderstood the tone in my mail.

Without common sense, all bug reports would be Enhancement requests,
or Critical, depending on how arrogant the reporter is. Common sense
must *always* be applied.

 I should be needed to be applied only to the least possible amount. One 
 should never have to think for no reason.
 The more common sense that have to be applied to make something work, the 
 less something works by itself.
 Of course, you can't completely do away with common sense. I said without 
 common sense to point out the problems.
 And, well, some have less common sense. Or a different kind. Or are just 
 tired, stressed out or something else.
 So, the less common sense needed, the better, IMO. My other point is that 
 reporters are like to become less technical.

 Oh, and use Reply to all so you stop just hitting Austin with responses!

 Huh? The mailing list is cc:d, Isn't that enough? I mean, it looks on you 
 mail you mailed me and cc:d?
 Doesn't the mailing list propagate messages if it is only cc:d?
 Have I misunderstood something? In that case I am sorry.

My apologies. I received Austin's responses before receiving your
original emails.

Rosanne is an AppDB admin. What contribution have you made to Wine?
Out of you and her, I don't think her credibility can be called in to
question. And before you ask, I'm also an AppDB admin, I package the
Debian packages for WineHQ, and have had a patch committed to Wine.
I'll even send you the git revision code if you can't find it! :D

Note that like Rosanne, even when I was a newbie submitting bug
reports, I understood the severity levels because I read the
descriptions. The descriptions are fine as is, with the possible
exception of Blocker (people submit Blocker bugs for Normal
issues because it blocks the thing that they're doing).

 It's seems you missed the :-). I put in the end of the sentence on 
 credibility.
 It was a joke and she seems to have took it that way, since she joked back.
 With regards to the severity levels, to me, none of them means what one would 
 think they do intuitively.

I disagree. When first introduced to them, I found the severity levels
to be suitably vague to make me read the definitions. Once I read
them, it was clear to me what each level means.

Either way, severity levels can be changed, and often are due to user
responses on the bugs. But bear in mind the severity levels are there
to help the developers categorise the bugs, and they are not there to
provide feedback to the average non-coding user.

Re: Severity levels

2009/5/3 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:

I disagree. When first introduced to them, I found the severity levels
to be suitably vague to make me read the definitions. Once I read
them, it was clear to me what each level means.

 Suitably? Do you mean that the severity levels are the way they are to make 
 people read their definitions?  :-)

 Jokes aside, that's exactly what I don't want.
 I want them to be even more vague(Low, Medium, High and Critical) and without 
 any definitions except for the highest level.
 This way, one will elicit more how the user perceives the overall impact of 
 the bug, without having to shoehorn them into some level that only partly 
 matches their impression. Done with the help of the users indisputable 
 common sense, of course.

So you suggest making the severity ratings meaningless to anyone but
... well, you don't actually mention anyone knowing what they *really*
mean, but I assume an exclusive clique of developers or bugzilla
admins? Users have different opinions on what level of bug they
encounter depending on what *task* they're trying to perform, which is
not particularly useful to developers who need strict reproducability.

 Also, the priority flag should not be visible to the user by default, it 
 should be a strangely named setting somewhere in the user preferences.

It already is a strangely named setting, but the user preferences is
far from the right place for it. It still has to be on a per-bug
level, and although it may not be the most useful option on bugs it is
still used by developers in-the-know, so maybe an additional message
that says Don't change the priority setting unless you know exactly
what you're doing? It's academic anyway, as the priority can be
appropriately adjusted later.

But bear in mind the severity levels are there
to help the developers categorise the bugs, and they are not there to
provide feedback to the average non-coding user.
 For categorisation, there could be a separate category flag if the 
 component categorisation + priority wouldn't suffice.

There already is a separate category flag. It's called severity and
it indicates roughly the amount of *functionality* lost due to the
bug. Priority does not indicate the severity of a bug; a bug may
have low priority due to limitations outside of Wine (such as some
blocker bugs for copy-protection systems which can't be supported in
Wine).

 Whatever. There are many ways to do it. But currently, the users' impression 
 of the problem get lost and/or skewed.

You're not going to like this, but users don't matter quite *that*
much on bugzilla. The bug tracker is a developer's tool, and although
users are essential to the process (submitting bugs and new
information on request), it should be designed as a developer's tool.
A user's impression of their problem is irrelevant to the hard data
they can provide about lost or missing functionality.

Re: Severity levels




Nicklas Börjesson wrote:

I think that the users should have quite a say with regards to how important a bug is, because for every user 
putting in the (considerable for a user) effort of reporting a bug, there are dozens that don't say anything at all. 


To every Wine user, their application not working is critical.  This is 
clear by all the bugs that are logged incorrectly every day, because 
nobody bothered reading the FAQ.

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-03 Thread IneedAname

On Sat, 2 May 2009 16:52:06 +0200
Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se wrote:

 3. Major  Major loss of functionality for a wide range of applications
 
 - Isn't this just all bugs that has more than $arbitrary_number of 
 applications linked to them? An aggregate, rather than a level?

In that case #16281 would be major not minor, That is if all the applications 
that has that bug link to it.

I think you can not find out how many applications link a bug. As that has not 
be coded.
To find out that information you would have to scan the application data base 
or change the way the data base holds this data.
I think you want to read bug #16284.

RE: Severity levels

 You'd be surprised...
We'll I've looked around at invalids, but to me it seems that people in 
general(with a few exceptions of course), tries quite hard until they file a 
bug report.
At least way harder than they do in other FOSS projects I have been involved 
in, so I can't really say that I would think you've got a problem.
At least not yet. Despite the support forum only have one list. More stuff on 
the wiki would help too.

Not all critical bugs are caused by the loader. It's possible for
d3d/ole/etc. to have a similar effect.

Yes, it is possible, but not likely enough to warrant an extra severity level. 
Yes, I have looked.

Keep in mind, most developers are unpaid as well. They're the ones
fixing the bugs, not users. While users are important, no work gets
done without the developers. 

I know that most developers are also unpaid. 
With maintained I didn't only mean maintainers of versions and so forth.

Developers have no way to prioritize one
user over another. The best way to prioritize *your* bug is to make a
*good* bug report. Make sure all needed information is included. Get a
testcase if possible. Provide the needed traces, etc. Even better, is
to write a patch yourself. The source is there, and there is nothing
stopping you from writing a patch.

Again. This is not what I am talking about. 
I am not relevant because I am also an experienced developer, so I have no 
problems with these things. 
I can patch like there is no tomorrow, given time. 

What I am talking about the fact that the ordinary users priorities are very 
important. 
Currently they are either:
1.Completely disregarded or
2. If they follow the instruction(where commons sense is not mentioned), 
they're forced to adhere to severity levels that distort or hide their opinion 
of the problem. And for each user reporting there are dozens that are not. Bad 
will. 

It just feels like the entire project should become a bit more user-centric. 
Now I am not just talking about shinier graphics but about attitude. 
Maybe soften up a bit ask oneself, WHY did this person ask this stupid 
question?, WHY did he do this EVEN though it says do this? or How would I 
feel if someone said this to me?.

//Nicklas

RE: Severity levels


I disagree. When first introduced to them, I found the severity levels
to be suitably vague to make me read the definitions. Once I read
them, it was clear to me what each level means.

Suitably? Do you mean that the severity levels are the way they are to make 
people read their definitions?  :-)

Jokes aside, that's exactly what I don't want. 
I want them to be even more vague(Low, Medium, High and Critical) and without 
any definitions except for the highest level.
This way, one will elicit more how the user perceives the overall impact of the 
bug, without having to shoehorn them into some level that only partly matches 
their impression. Done with the help of the users indisputable common sense, 
of course.

Also, the priority flag should not be visible to the user by default, it should 
be a strangely named setting somewhere in the user preferences.

But bear in mind the severity levels are there
to help the developers categorise the bugs, and they are not there to
provide feedback to the average non-coding user.
For categorisation, there could be a separate category flag if the component 
categorisation + priority wouldn't suffice. 

Whatever. There are many ways to do it. But currently, the users' impression of 
the problem get lost and/or skewed.

//Nicklas

Re: Severity levels




IneedAname wrote:

On Sat, 2 May 2009 16:52:06 +0200
Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se wrote:


3. MajorMajor loss of functionality for a wide range of applications

- Isn't this just all bugs that has more than $arbitrary_number of applications 
linked to them? An aggregate, rather than a level?


In that case #16281 would be major not minor, That is if all the applications 
that has that bug link to it.

I think you can not find out how many applications link a bug. As that has not 
be coded.
To find out that information you would have to scan the application data base 
or change the way the data base holds this data.
I think you want to read bug #16284.




That would be the Show Apps affected by this bug link then.
http://appdb.winehq.org/viewbugs.php?bug_id=16281

Re: Severity levels

Nicklas Börjesson wrote:
To every Wine user, their application not working is critical. This is
clear by all the bugs that are logged incorrectly every day, because
nobody bothered reading the FAQ.

Yep, but that's more an indication on how much work remains to be done on wine
than it is an incorrect severity level.

No it isn't. It's an indication on how many people think they're more
important than anyone else filing a bug.

If Photoshop(the eternal example) should stop working on windows due to a
regression, I am sure the users would consider it critical when they report it
to Microsoft.

It doesn't matter what the users think, we've been over this, it would
be up to MS coders.
They would put a high priority on it because Adobe it a major player,
and I'm sure MS makes a lot of money out of them one way or another.
This is a FOSS project and has no bearing on severity levels.
If a set of devs decide to work on getting a particular app working
that's up to them, and we've already been over this too.

But as the wine project progresses, severity levels will hopefully drop so that there will be more nuances.

As Wine progress, the higher severities will be less and less. Higher
sev levels will stand out a lot more. That's what they're for.

I just think there is something severely when registering a bug that results in unworkable applications is considered a normal or even minor bug.
To me, that's sending the wrong signals about the ambition of the project.

Nobody else seems to have this problem.

Unless the not yet suitable for general use from the faq is everywhere with
blinking warning signs.

Bares no relevance whatsoever to severity levels in Bugzilla.

//Nicklas

Note to self: Reply to ALL.

Re: Severity levels

2009/5/3 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
 You'd be surprised...
 We'll I've looked around at invalids, but to me it seems that people in 
 general(with a few exceptions of course), tries quite hard until they file a 
 bug report.
 At least way harder than they do in other FOSS projects I have been involved 
 in, so I can't really say that I would think you've got a problem.
 At least not yet. Despite the support forum only have one list. More stuff on 
 the wiki would help too.

Why should there be multiple support forums? The wiki has _a lot_ of
info, most of the time when bugs are closed invalid, wiki links are
given to fix the problem. Again, wine _is_ an open source project. If
the wiki isn't good enough, add something.


 What I am talking about the fact that the ordinary users priorities are very 
 important.
 Currently they are either:
 1.Completely disregarded or
 2. If they follow the instruction(where commons sense is not mentioned), 
 they're forced to adhere to severity levels that distort or hide their 
 opinion of the problem. And for each user reporting there are dozens that are 
 not. Bad will.

How do you mean their priorities are important? It's an uncomfortable
truth, but users priorities aren't important, like has been said
dozens of times. Sure, we care about user's bugs, and want to fix
them. But every user also thinks *their* app is the most important
application to fix. I regularly change around 3-5 bugs _a day_ that
are marked critical, because their favorite app XYZ doesn't run. A
good portion of that time, the bug is invalid, because they forgot a
runtime, e.g., the application didn't bundle msvcrt80 or the like.

Wine can't stop development on _everything_ just to get one user's
application running. Making user's arbitrary priorities the most
important would be doing this.

 It just feels like the entire project should become a bit more user-centric.
 Now I am not just talking about shinier graphics but about attitude.
 Maybe soften up a bit ask oneself, WHY did this person ask this stupid 
 question?, WHY did he do this EVEN though it says do this? or How would I 
 feel if someone said this to me?.

No disagreement there. Most developers do have a friendly attitude
towards users. If they don't, e-mail them in private, with a copy of
what they said and ask them to be more civil.

I'd encourage you to subscribe to wine-bugs for a while. Look how much
mail/bugs we go through, and you'll quickly see why time to hold every
users hand and fix _their_ most important bug is impossible.

-- 
-Austin

Re: Severity levels




IneedAname wrote:

On Sun, 03 May 2009 18:10:03 +0100
Ken Sharp kennyb...@o2.co.uk wrote:


That would be the Show Apps affected by this bug link then.
http://appdb.winehq.org/viewbugs.php?bug_id=16281


Thanks I missed that so how but my first point still stands.




Not really.  16281 certainly isn't a major loss of functionality, no 
matter how many bugs are attached to it.

Re: Severity levels




Nicklas Börjesson wrote:
How many times does this have to be repeated?  Severity levels are NOT 
determined by how much a user wants the app to work.  They're just not, 
deal with it.


I have never said it is, either. 
I said it think it should be determined by how severe the user thinks 
it is(if devs then cares about it is another matter).


And you've already been told it shouldn't, and this has been explained 
to you.


snip waffle

Junk.

Re: Severity levels

2009/5/3 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
Why should there be multiple support forums?

 Well, not forums, but as I said different lists for different kinds
 of applications(games/business/graphics), since they should(?) have related 
 problems.
 I would think so, anyway.

The forums seem to serve this well as is.

The wiki has _a lot_ of info, most of the time when bugs are closed invalid,
wiki links are given to fix the problem. Again, wine _is_ an open source 
project.
 If the wiki isn't good enough, add something.

 I am talking about avoiding a bug being submitted at all.
 Maybe to organize how-to-run information.
 Sure I could do a bit of that. It's like the idea you had about getting 
 funding,
 did they tell you to go do it all by yourself?

http://appdb.winehq.org ?

How do you mean their priorities are important? It's an uncomfortable
truth, but users priorities aren't important, like has been said
dozens of times. Sure, we care about user's bugs, and want to fix
them.
 ...
 Users priorities probably affect what severity level they choose.
 But as I said to Ken, I can't believe that all users are morons.
 Anyway, regardless of their motives, I still think that they have to be 
 included.

It doesn't affect anything, so there is no point. We can give every
user a gold star and say yes, it's our highest priority, but it
doesn't do anything, so _there is no_ point.

 If not, the project will slowly drift away and turn into a toy nobody have 
 any use for.

I highly doubt Wine is going to become irrelevant because users have
their bugs reassigned from critical to normal...

But every user also thinks *their* app is the most important
application to fix.

 Actually, I can't believe they all are that way.

Again, you may not think it, but I've been triaging bugs for 3 years,
so I know what does happen.

Wine can't stop development on _everything_ just to get one user's
application running. Making user's arbitrary priorities the most
important would be doing this.

 Good thing I didn't propose that then. :-)
 I said it should be a part of the priority and a considerable one. Not the 
 largest one.
 And I am not talking about users arbitrary priorities, just including
 more intuitive severity levels(good or bad) when making bug fixing priorities.

I think this argument is circular...Wine has no shortage of bugs being
reported, we have plenty of new users reporting bugs, and new
developers contributing often. You're proposing adding an extra
severity rating that no developer will look at, and will only add to
confusion (users now have to decide *two* levels rather than one). It
won't add any benefit, other than possibly giving users a warm fuzzy
feeling that their bug is 'important' to them (which they can already
do with voting), but adds confusion, wasted time, and wasted effort.

-- 
-Austin

Re: Severity levels

2009/5/3 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
 It just feels like the entire project should become a bit more user-centric.
 Now I am not just talking about shinier graphics but about attitude.

Bugzilla not user tool. Bugzilla developers' tool. Bugzilla need work
like developers want.

2009/5/4 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
So you suggest making the severity ratings meaningless to anyone but
... well, you don't actually mention anyone knowing what they *really*
mean, but I assume an exclusive clique of developers or bugzilla
admins? Users have different opinions on what level of bug they
encounter depending on what *task* they're trying to perform, which is
not particularly useful to developers who need strict reproducability.

 No, I mean that the actual meaning of the words low, medium, high and 
 Critical will suffice.



No they won't. In order for the severity levels to be meaningful, they
need to be strictly defined. Take the example of contracts or
legislation, where otherwise unambiguous words are defined in context
just to make it 100% perfectly clear what's being talked about. Wine
is a *big* project, and we really don't need massive confusion over
what the severity levels mean.

 I think most people have a fair understanding what medium and critical 
 means.

Apparently not. Most people don't see the bigger picture, they only
see what they're doing right now (e.g. Critical bugs filed because
they have an assignment due the next day when it is in fact only a
Minor or Normal bug).

 This is not meaningless at all, to trying to clarify these levels is quite 
 pointless though.

OK, so give examples of what would be low, medium, high and
critical bugs.

 Yes, some people tend to exaggerate their issues, but that's just the way it 
 is.

And removing the definitions can in no way help this.

 And to my experience, they are few. Most actually don't exaggerate as much.

So you're suggesting to completely overhaul the system for only a FEW
users to be more productive in submitting bugs?

 To them, the situation IS critical, bordering on panic.
 Rather, thinking that their users are exaggerating is a way for developers to 
 not let reality come to close.
 Hell, I do it myself right now. :-)

Yes, but that's not what the severity indicates. As it has already
been said, focusing on a particular user's problem just because THEY
think it's critical is completely unproductive for a large (massive?)
project like Wine. Wine devs need to look at the big picture, as in
What is the overall impact of this bug? Who and what is affected?
Roughly how many applications does it affect/break? and THAT's what
the severity setting is for.

Another way to look at severity is a rough indication of how much code
change is expected to be required to fix the bug. In theory (but by no
means in all cases in practice), a Minor bug should have very little
code changed compared to a Major bug. Again, severity is there for the
*developers* to use and understand, not for the users.

 I don't see how the reproducibility connects to the severity level?

It doesn't. It connects to the interaction between user and developer.
You're talking about user impressions - THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED NOW OR
I WILL DIE - I'm talking about REAL bug report information - When
you click on this button then hit this menu option, the application
draws squiggly lines all over the screen. Graphics card has nVidia
180.29 drivers.

 Regarding the priority flag..i was referring to it's visibility, not its 
 state.

Bugzilla doesn't (and can't) know the difference between an average
non-tech-savvy user and a hard-core developer. If the priority flag is
hidden from average users because they shouldn't change it, then it
will also be hidden from people who know how to use it properly, and
more importantly the people who NEED to change it (to make their
report complete).

There already is a separate category flag. It's called severity and
it indicates roughly the amount of *functionality* lost due to the
bug. Priority does not indicate the severity of a bug; a bug may
have low priority due to limitations outside of Wine (such as some
blocker bugs for copy-protection systems which can't be supported in
Wine).

 My point is that there should be no need for that flag.
 Let the users have it as input, and let the developers use component+priority.

Component + priority gives absolutely no indication on the overall
impact of a bug, as I have mentioned before. Priority and severity
(developer-side severity) do not have a 1-to-1 relationship.

You're not going to like this, but users don't matter quite *that*
much on bugzilla. The bug tracker is a developer's tool, and although
users are essential to the process (submitting bugs and new
information on request), it should be designed as a developer's tool.
A user's impression of their problem is irrelevant to the hard data
they can provide about lost or missing functionality.

 You are right. I don't like

Re: Severity levels

2009/5/4 Austin English austinengl...@gmail.com:
 2009/5/3 Nicklas Börjesson nicklas.borjes...@ws.se:
Why should there be multiple support forums?

 Well, not forums, but as I said different lists for different kinds
 of applications(games/business/graphics), since they should(?) have related 
 problems.
 I would think so, anyway.

That would be the case if *everyone* who *ever* produced software
banded together and established a one-way-to-do-one-thing API set.
Doesn't happen that way. Firefox and IE have drastically different
success/failure/issues when running in Wine, as do MS Word and
WordPerfect (I bet you thought I was going to say OOWriter!)

 The forums seem to serve this well as is.

Also AppDB has a browse feature, and lists bugs that apply to each
application (when moderated correctly).

The wiki has _a lot_ of info, most of the time when bugs are closed invalid,
wiki links are given to fix the problem. Again, wine _is_ an open source 
project.
 If the wiki isn't good enough, add something.

 I am talking about avoiding a bug being submitted at all.

By making the bug reporting system more confusing?

 Maybe to organize how-to-run information.
 Sure I could do a bit of that. It's like the idea you had about getting 
 funding,
 did they tell you to go do it all by yourself?

 http://appdb.winehq.org ?

How do you mean their priorities are important? It's an uncomfortable
truth, but users priorities aren't important, like has been said
dozens of times. Sure, we care about user's bugs, and want to fix
them.
 ...
 Users priorities probably affect what severity level they choose.
 But as I said to Ken, I can't believe that all users are morons.
 Anyway, regardless of their motives, I still think that they have to be 
 included.

User priorities do not affect which bug should be examined first. All
bugs are created equal (and some bugs are more equal than others).

Not really the case there, but all bugs of each severity (this is
developer-side severity) are created equal and should be treated as
such.

 It doesn't affect anything, so there is no point. We can give every
 user a gold star and say yes, it's our highest priority, but it
 doesn't do anything, so _there is no_ point.

 If not, the project will slowly drift away and turn into a toy nobody have 
 any use for.

 I highly doubt Wine is going to become irrelevant because users have
 their bugs reassigned from critical to normal...

You'd be surprised! Releases will stop, AJ will quit citing user
unfriendliness, the Earth will spin off its axis and throw everyone
save John Smith from Liverpool out in to space, and so forth, all
because MY BUG WAS REDUCED FROM CRITICAL TO NORMAL! It's critical to
me, so why is it not critical to the developers?

/sarcasm

But every user also thinks *their* app is the most important
application to fix.

 Actually, I can't believe they all are that way.

 Again, you may not think it, but I've been triaging bugs for 3 years,
 so I know what does happen.

Maybe you should have said the average user instead of every user,
but it's true. If we leave the severity level up to the user, we'll
get a whole lot of Critical bugs being submitted that aren't critical
on the developer's side.

Wine can't stop development on _everything_ just to get one user's
application running. Making user's arbitrary priorities the most
important would be doing this.

 Good thing I didn't propose that then. :-)
 I said it should be a part of the priority and a considerable one. Not the 
 largest one.

So where should it sit exactly? In between how long will this take to
code and how many apps does this effect? Should it be higher than
is there a simple, *correct* way to fix this?

 And I am not talking about users arbitrary priorities, just including
 more intuitive severity levels(good or bad) when making bug fixing 
 priorities.

So, you mean allow the users to arbitrarily select whether THEY think
their bug should have a high priority or not?

 I think this argument is circular...Wine has no shortage of bugs being
 reported, we have plenty of new users reporting bugs, and new
 developers contributing often. You're proposing adding an extra
 severity rating that no developer will look at, and will only add to
 confusion (users now have to decide *two* levels rather than one).

No, he's proposing to dump the developer-focused severity completely,
because component + priority should be good enough, and replace it
with ill-defined, ambiguous Low, Medium, High, Critical. Blockers and
metabugs would also disappear under his proposed model, it seems.
After all, what good are metabugs to users? ;)

 It
 won't add any benefit, other than possibly giving users a warm fuzzy
 feeling that their bug is 'important' to them (which they can already
 do with voting), but adds confusion, wasted time, and wasted effort.

+1

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-03 Thread James McKenzie

Ken Sharp wrote:


 Nicklas Börjesson wrote:

 I think that the users should have quite a say with regards to how
 important a bug is, because for every user putting in the
 (considerable for a user) effort of reporting a bug, there are dozens
 that don't say anything at all. 

 To every Wine user, their application not working is critical.  This
 is clear by all the bugs that are logged incorrectly every day,
 because nobody bothered reading the FAQ.
You bet.  The application that I reported, which has a perfectly good
Linux port, has to be fixed absolutely last week.  I've seen this in
the user list again and again.  It gets boorish after a while.

Let's try user education.  You only get to choose normal and we get to
up/downgrade until you can prove that you know how to do it right.  This
is how some companies do it.

James McKenzie

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-03 Thread Mike Kaplinskiy

2009/5/3 James McKenzie jjmckenzi...@earthlink.net:
 Ken Sharp wrote:


 Nicklas Börjesson wrote:

 I think that the users should have quite a say with regards to how
 important a bug is, because for every user putting in the
 (considerable for a user) effort of reporting a bug, there are dozens
 that don't say anything at all.

 To every Wine user, their application not working is critical.  This
 is clear by all the bugs that are logged incorrectly every day,
 because nobody bothered reading the FAQ.
 You bet.  The application that I reported, which has a perfectly good
 Linux port, has to be fixed absolutely last week.  I've seen this in
 the user list again and again.  It gets boorish after a while.

 Let's try user education.  You only get to choose normal and we get to
 up/downgrade until you can prove that you know how to do it right.  This
 is how some companies do it.

 James McKenzie





+1. Or just remove priorities for users altogether.

Re: Severity levels

2009-05-03 Thread Rosanne DiMesio


 
  Let's try user education.  You only get to choose normal and we get to
  up/downgrade until you can prove that you know how to do it right.  This
  is how some companies do it.
 
  James McKenzie
 
 
 +1. Or just remove priorities for users altogether.
 

I think you mean severity. I agree that users should be limited in what 
severity level they can set, but I suspect that not allowing them to set 
severity at all would create too much work for the people who would have to go 
in and set the severity level for every bug filed. What I would suggest is 
making the default severity normal rather than enhancement, as that's what's 
appropriate in most cases anyway (and there's already a bug report, 13363, 
suggesting just that), and perhaps allowing users to lower the severity if they 
want. Judgments about raising the severity level above normal should be 
restricted to the people who know what they're doing. 


Rosanne DiMesio dime...@earthlink.net

Re: Severity levels

2009/5/3 Rosanne DiMesio dime...@earthlink.net:
 What I would suggest is making the default severity normal rather than 
 enhancement, as that's what's appropriate in most cases anyway (and there's 
 already a bug report, 13363, suggesting just that), and perhaps allowing 
 users to lower the severity if they want. Judgments about raising the 
 severity level above normal should be restricted to the people who know what 
 they're doing.

+1

-- 
-Austin

Re: Severity levels

2009/5/4 Austin English austinengl...@gmail.com:
 2009/5/3 Rosanne DiMesio dime...@earthlink.net:
 What I would suggest is making the default severity normal rather than 
 enhancement, as that's what's appropriate in most cases anyway (and there's 
 already a bug report, 13363, suggesting just that), and perhaps allowing 
 users to lower the severity if they want. Judgments about raising the 
 severity level above normal should be restricted to the people who know what 
 they're doing.

 +1

+1

But how would the restriction work? Not that I'm likely to ever submit
a Major or Critical bug report, but I know what they mean ;)

Re: Severity levels