[Vtigercrm-developers] Being Good Tool Users

[Ken Lyle]

Community Engagement and Bug Fix Case Study:

http://forums.vtiger.com/viewtopic.php?t=10811

I submitted a simple one file patch on October 31.
That fix is stuck in the middle of the forum thread at
the bottom of page 3.

**Can I make a post within a thread Starred, Featured,
Sticky?  That would seem like a good thing in this
case.

***Some people have reported that it works, some
people have other issues.  It appears that we have NO
STRUCTURED mechanism for capturing the fact that there
is a candidate fix, and what versions and operating
systems on which the fix was successful or
unsuccessful.

Furthermore, we don't seem to have a way of tracking
the 'credibility' of each report.  Ideally, we could
score these like so:

Senior Users: 90% fix rate
Intermediate Users: 60% fix rate
Noob Users: 50% fix rate

>From this example, I would assume that the fix is
good, for the versions where the Senior Users report a
fix rate over 80%, and the rest is user error.

Back to the story....Today, 10 days later (Is that
good? It gives time to get feedback, but wastes time
of people who have a hard time finding the
fix)...Nithya moved this to TRAC,
http://vtiger.fosslabs.com/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/ticket/2578
, and posted a link to the 
thread above, but it's not obvious that you have to go
to page 3 to find the patch.  There's no way in the
forum to filter just posts with attachments....see **

SO, I posted the patch to the TRAC ticket.  But not
everyone has access to TRAC, I think.  FURTHER, when I
go to the TRAC page,
http://vtiger.fosslabs.com/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/report ,
not logged in (public), I can't SEARCH

How can I determine whether the bug that I am
considering posting has already been posted?  Even if
I click Active Tickets, 
there is No Search.  I don't believe that everyone
knows about Ctrl+F (Firefox).

IF we had ***, either in PHPBB or TRAC, then we could
confidently LOCK the forum thread with a single
redirect to the TRAC ticket.

SO, here is an idea...

SEARCH in the Forums seems broken...why, when I search
for "Incoming Email" is the thread above 6th, behind
less relevant threads?

Assuming that THAT can be fixed...perhaps, when there
is a candidate fix for a bug, there should be a POLL
created that runs for a certain period...after which,
if more than X% report success, the thread is locked,
and  
a Starred, Featured, Sticky redirect to the TRAC
ticket placed atop the thread.  This would save
everyone time...

I am a Moderator, where is the ability to create a
Poll?  I would like to try this concept...

Second, maybe TRAC is a better place to collect
Operating System and version information for each bug
and candidate fix.  Who can add these 
fields?

This would also provide us usage data, right?  I know
Sugar has that thing that collects usage data, which I
would guess includes O/S, # of records,
etc.  If we know what configurations people are using,
we can better isolate bugs...In fact, I can't really
imagine trying to do it without that info.

How can we even set priorities without knowing, for
example, "There are 10 users with Bug #XXXX, but they
are all running Red Hat 7".  Then we can issue
a statement that Red Hat 7 is not an officially
supported platform, but Good Luck anyway....

I think it's important to realize that if we can save
120 people 30 seconds every day, we can get an extra
hour that can be 
used to improve vTiger.

I offer a challenge to all of you.....to select tools
and use them in a way that accurately reflects the
talent and intelligence of this group, because, right
now, it does not, IMNSHO (In My Not So Humble
Opinion).  

AND, of course, the Core Team should avoid shipping
critical modules in a broken state.

I want to help this effort, but become disheartened
when it looks like nobody is thinking systematically,
and there is no documentation sufficient
to guide a reasonably bright person in how to
contribute...I'll contribute some of that next, partly
based on feedback to this thread.

I've put hours into composing this, and would like to
see something come of it...

Thanks,
Ken

484-948-5706
866-OUT OF BOX
(866-688-6326)

-- 
"He who reads nothing is more educated than he who reads nothing but newspapers."  - Thomas Jefferson