[eclipse-dev] Re: [platform-ui-dev] Correct usage of bug priorities

[Jeff McAffer <Jeff_McAffer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Here here!

The Eclipse team greatly appreciates
the time and effort that the community puts into tracking down and reporting
bugs.  We would not be where we are today without that input.  We
also appreciate that our users have come to depend on Eclipse for important
parts of their lives (whether it be work or fun or both).

However, as we approach the end of the
3.0 cycle the team needs to be able to identify and focus on the critical
issues.  As Stefan points out, overstating bug severity is a major
(no pun intended) inhibitor in that process.  Once a bug has been
analyzed, the *Eclipse Team* assigns a priority given the other problems
and our workloads.  Please do NOT change priority of a bug.  This
is how we manage our work.

I would also ask that you followup on
your bugs.  If you found more information, were asked for more information,
found that it was user/configuration error, etc etc.  letting us know
can save alot of time that can then be spent improving other areas.

Finally, don't be afraid of marking
a report as an Enhancement.  This does not mean it gets ignored.  There
are many polish items and minor annoyances which take little time to address
and we appreciate knowing about them.  These can add substantially
to the quality of the end result.

Thanks
Jeff

Stefan Xenos/Ottawa/IBM@IBMCA
Sent by: platform-ui-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx

05/05/2004 08:25 PM

Please respond to
platform-ui-dev

To	platform-ui-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
cc
Subject	[platform-ui-dev] Correct usage of bug priorities

I'd like to direct everyone's attention to the following URL:

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/bug_status.html#bug_severity

Currently, too many bugs are being misclassified with a severity of "major"
or higher. This noise is starting to make it hard to locate the really
urgent bugs, and some real biggies are sometimes going unnoticed.


I would like to suggest the following guidelines: 
1. If classifying a bug as "blocker", the bug must indicate what
it blocks (ie: which product, feature, or Eclipse milestone is being delayed
until the bug is resolved) 
2. In order to be classified as "critical", a bug must cause
Eclipse to crash, delete user data, or report a memory leak which is severe
enough to cause Eclipse to become unusable. 
3. To be classified as "major", there must be some important
piece of functionality that is unusable (with no workaround). The existence
of a workaround means that the bug cannot be major.
4. All cosmetic problems are "trivial", no matter how ugly.
5. Nobody other than the bug owner should ever modify the priority field.
6. If someone has removed themself from the CC list or the Assigned To
field, they don't want to be there. 
7. Don't be rude 


I believe we need some sort of minimal policing of the bugzilla system
in order to reduce its abuse. The guidelines above should probably be displayed
every time a new bug is entered along with a warning like: "Failure
to follow these rules will result in deletion of your bugzilla account".
The threat of repercussions would probably be enough to eliminate most
of the abuse, even if no accounts were ever deleted.

  - Stefan