[tor-dev] Survey on Tor Trac usage and how you manage your tasks

[Robert Ransom]

On 2011-09-06, Karsten Loesing <karsten.loesing at gmx.net> wrote:

>> 1.1 Which of the reports (stored ticket queries) do you use most often?
>
> From all the replies, there's 1 person using 5 reports, 2 persons using
> 3 reports, 1 person using 2 reports, 4 persons using 1 report, and 5
> persons using no reports at all.  There's only 1 report being viewed by
> more than one person.  5 persons are not using reports at all.
>
> The following reports are viewed: 7, 8, 12 (mentioned twice), 14, 22, 23
> (mentioned twice), 27, 28, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40 (mentioned twice).
> Hence, the following reports are not viewed: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11,
> 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37.
>
> [Suggestion: Backup and delete all reports with a component name in
> them.  The current list of Available Reports list is mostly useless for
> newcomers who don't care much about components, but who are interested
> in finding something to work on.  Developers and volunteers can bookmark
> custom queries or put links to them on a wiki page belonging to a
> component.  For example, report 12 "Tor: Active Tickets by Milestone" is
> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=!closed&group=milestone&component=Tor+Relay&component=Tor+Client&component=Tor+Bridge&component=Tor+Hidden+Services&component=Tor+bundles%2Finstallation&component=Tor+Directory+Authority&order=priority&col=id&col=summary&col=component&col=status&col=type&col=priority&col=milestone&col=version&col=keywords
> ]

This is unnecessary.  New developers need to find the 'Custom Query'
page anyway; leaving reports on the 'Available Reports' page that no
one reported using in this survey will not make that any harder.
Making the 'Search the Tor bug tracker' link on the wiki main page
bold might help.

Also, at least one of the reports on that page
(https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/report/24 (Archived
Mixminion-* Tasks)) is for a query that we can no longer perform using
the 'Custom Query' page; many of the rest would be difficult to
recreate as a custom query.

>> 1.7 What are typical search terms that you use when using the search
>> features?
>
> 3 persons search Trac using key words and 1 person types in ticket
> numbers in the search field.  The rest doesn't use the search feature.

I type ticket numbers into my browser's search field, too.  I don't
consider typing a Trac link target specifier into the search field to
be searching.

> The Version field (3, 3, 5) is not used by many components and is
> considered not very useful, because bug reporters get versions wrong in
> most cases anyway.  Also, current versions of products are never in the
> list.
>
> [Suggestion: Delete all obsolete versions from the list, and try harder
> to add new versions.]

This field might receive more useful input from users if it were an
ordinary text field.  There are already far too many possible values
for this field to be useful in searches; allowing arbitrary strings
here cannot make it less useful

> Single "tor" component: I don't know what confuses others, but IMO the
> proliferation of components that are all "tor" doesn't help me, and
> makes stuff slightly harder.

If these components were merged, I would have much more trouble
digging through a custom query to find a particular ticket.


Robert Ransom