[Sugar-devel] RFC: Catch-all Trac component, bug wrangling team

[Sascha Silbe]

Hi!

I'd like to propose
a) adding a "catch-all" component on bugs.sugarlabs.org and
b) making the catch-all component the default.
c) "finding" a bug wrangler (individual or team).

An increasing number of bugs get assigned to the wrong component 
(usually "sugar" because it's the default) and often just stay there for 
a long time.

To make a real difference, the catch-all component should _not_ be 
assigned to one of the usual, already busy suspects.

On the Gentoo Bugzilla, Jakub Moc did an awesome job as a "bug wrangler" 
[1]. If you didn't find an existing ticket and filed a new one, he 
usually redirected you to the right one instead (closing yours as 
duplicate). His memory was amazing.
While I don't expect anyone to even come close to that standard, we 
could use someone doing bug wrangling work, i.e.:

- assign new bugs to the correct component
- assign type (defect / feature request) and initial severity (data loss 
-> critical, cosmetic change -> trivial)
- ask for additional information if incomplete (logs, versions, steps to 
reproduce, ...)


Please note that detailed technical knowledge is _not_ necessary to do 
this job properly - just a general idea of how the parts of Sugar fit 
together. The developers can easily bounce a ticket to a "sibling" 
component once they know what's going on.

In the past we've had some instances of a Bug Triage (*) team, recruited 
from the usual suspects, each time only lasting shortly (e.g. directly 
prior to SoaS or Sugar release). With a permanent bug wrangling team (or 
person) the workload is spread over time and thus much easier to manage.


[1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/qa/bug-wranglers/
(*) "Triage" is also used by Ubuntu to describe bug wrangling work. I 
try to avoid the term because it describes a military process that has 
been adopted in civil "emergency response" teams. I think it suffices to 
say that both are problematic.

CU Sascha

-- 
http://sascha.silbe.org/
http://www.infra-silbe.de/
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