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

[Karsten Loesing]

On 9/6/11 2:19 PM, Robert Ransom wrote:
> 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.

Yup.  Not touching the list of Available Reports. :)

>>> 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.

I mentioned this feature, because someone was asking for a way to type
in ticket numbers somewhere.

>> 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

I don't think we can turn this field into a text field, unless we start
hacking Trac.  We should probably try harder to keep the versions
up-to-date to make the field at least somewhat 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.

Yup.  I can see both positions here.  I don't think we'll find a
solution in this thread.  This was Nick's suggestion.  Maybe discuss
this with Nick directly?

Best,
Karsten