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Date:      Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:02:35 -0800
From:      Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>
To:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Bug triage (Was: FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle)
Message-ID:  <20120118110235.0dbbf8ed@mikmeyer-vm-fedora>
In-Reply-To: <4F170623.4080006@freebsd.org>
References:  <alpine.BSF.2.00.1112211415580.19710@kozubik.com> <op.v78i3yxi34t2sn@tech304> <4F15C44F.1030208@freebsd.org> <1326836797.1669.234.camel@revolution.hippie.lan> <4F16019F.2060300@FreeBSD.org> <1326843399.1669.249.camel@revolution.hippie.lan> <4F160B99.1060001@FreeBSD.org> <CADWvR2jdeu6R%2BmX1n2Uz1WUBcZ=BKWSDB4nR-rEv_P4jAZg3HQ@mail.gmail.com> <4F16900A.90905@FreeBSD.org> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1201181121010.51158@fledge.watson.org> <4F170623.4080006@freebsd.org>

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On Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:49:23 -0800
Julian Elischer <julian@freebsd.org> wrote:

> On 1/18/12 3:32 AM, Robert Watson wrote:
> >
> > Another possibility is to get some combination of {The FreeBSD 
> > Foundation, iX Systems, ...} to trawl the bug report database in a 
> > more official capacity. The problem there is that this will be a 
> > high burn-out job.  I'll bring it up at the next Foundation board 
> > meeting, especially after a bumper year of fund-raising, and see 
> > what we can do.
> we really need a bug-submitting-user advocate..

The word you're looking for here is "triage". One of the two common
denominators of the good support organizations I've worked with is
good triage (the other is good metrics).

> Someone (need not have a commit bit) who doesn't take charge of the 
> patch, but, rather,
> acts as a project manager in the process of getting it in.
> i.e. finding, and then pinging the approriate developer, and 
> occasionally nagging them or
> finding an alternate dev if the first choice is unresponsive.
> 
> diplomatic skill would be important..  maybe a woman might be best in
> this job as the developers tend to not want to be rude to women :-)  .

Actually, there's a second half to this that you're overlooking. The
person doing this job should make sure the PR's have everything the
developer needs before they assign them to a developer. I suspect the
devs would be a lot more responsive if they could actually work on the
bug, and not have to explain that "this is a feature, not a bug", or
reproducing it to verify that it's not a user problem, or walking the
submitter through the process of getting a core dump, etc.

Which also calls for diplomatic skills.

Ok, could one of the bugmeisters provide a count of # of bug
submissions/day for the last year, or some such?

    Thanks,
    <mike



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