Bjorn is not
subscribed to the PMC list. Here are his comments. We should use
dash-dev for future comments, I think.
From: Bjorn
Freeman-Benson [mailto:bjorn.freeman-benson@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 11:31
AM
To: Gaff, Doug
Cc: DSDP PMC
list; dash-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [dsdp-pmc] The Eclipse
Project Dashboard
Martin, Doug, (and the DSDP PMC and dash-dev)
In
answer to your email:
1. The project
dashboard has been totally changed recently, without any notice to committers.
I liked the old dashboard, and I had put a link to it on the dsdp/tm homepage.
So my #1 feedback to Bjorn is: if you are planning any changes to publicly
visible URLs, let
committer know what you're up to. Don't we want to
have open processes? I hate broken links like http://www.eclipse.org/projects/dashboard/dashboard_detail.php?project=dsdp.tm that
used to work fine.
The project dashboard was a prototype (that's what the
big red box warning on the page was about) and was being misused by (among
other people) the press. The data was not valid. Rather than continue to tell
people that, I just removed it. It was a public beta. I waffle between two
positions: providing public betas and then changing them, or not providing any
information at all. We look forward to your input via Bugzilla and your help
in writing the dashboard code (it's all in the Project Dash
CVS).
2. Projects should not define the
metrics themselves if they are publicly visible.
The dashboard gets unusable if it's not totally clear what's visible. Projects
could be enabled to use the DASH databases to make their own computations and
publish them on their own homepages. But the common dashboard should work the
same for all projects, or it gets totally
confusing.
3. I agree that
different metrics
would be useful in different phases of the project,
but there should be ONE common definition of what is
visible.
I think the best solution is to come up with a
community-defined single formula. The original formula was a pseudo-random
invention by me. Far better would be to have the community experiment with the
raw data and come up with a consensus about the formula or formulas. The old
prototype dashboard provided raw data for such experiments, but there was no
conversation about the formula other than to say "it's wrong". I'm not sure
what to do here.
My next proposal is to allow projects to use
project-info.xml to define a formula and then to have dashboard pages that
show all the projects "the world as seen by BIRT", "the world as seen by
DSDP", etc.
4. Yes, being
explicit about
the formulas used is important. I don't think that
SQL statements are sufficient. There should be some plaintext explanation of
what's visible on a report.
There was a whole page about how the old dashboard was
computed, and there were links from the dashboard pages, and yet people didn't
seem to find it. That page explained the formula, the raw data, everything.
The new project-defined or community-defined formulas can do the
same.
5. Regarding the new
metrics:
5a) dsdp.tm project is missing
totally.
5b) I liked the
metrics on mailinglist, newsgroup and bugzilla activity, I'm missing those.
I'm not sure that commits only is a good
indicator.
We are working hard to
recreate the code that extracts that data. We would be happy to have your
assistance. We agree that commits alone is not a good measure.
-
Bjorn
