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   Allan Day (allanday@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 07-Nov-2023 21:23:48 JST Allan Day

   I'm working on updating GNOME's issue management guidelines. Anyone got any favourite tricks for keeping an issue tracker under control? Or any policies that have worked well?

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     Bø!rge (forteller@tutoteket.no)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 04:46:41 JST Bø!rge

     in reply to

     @allanday Some think that there's way too much noise, distracting from their work. At the same time it's very important to listen to people's wishes. A trick might be to work hard on making it as easy and visible as possible for everyone to understand where exactly an issue should be opened before it's opened (it can be hard to know where the bug lies), and a policy could be to only allow comments from the reporter and devs, while others have to just show support with reaction emojis. Perhaps.

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     Bø!rge (forteller@tutoteket.no)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 04:48:30 JST Bø!rge

     in reply to

     • Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh:

     @cassidy I very much agree with your thought on leaving nice comments explaining what's happening. At the same time I'm sure this can become really tiresome real fast, so I'm thinking the software should have some easily available template texts, and also make it easy to add more texts to those templates. Click, (edit if needed) and post. @allanday

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     Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh: (cassidy@mastodon.blaede.family)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 04:48:31 JST Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh:

     in reply to

     @allanday

     • The culture around closing issues sometimes needs to be clarified on both the maintainer and reporter side; closing/re-opening is a very low risk action, so a comment, “Closing as this doesn't seem to be reproducible; we can re-open if there's new information,” can go a long way

     • I strongly discourage bots auto-closing issues unless they state the above and don't *lock* it; even so, people get frustrated when a bot closes their issue because it feels like nobody acknowledged it

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     Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh: (cassidy@mastodon.blaede.family)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 04:48:32 JST Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh:

     in reply to

     @allanday

     • WONTFIX/INVALID labels come off as abrasive; labels should focus on the WHY, like “Duplicate” or “Out of scope”

     • Whenever possible, someone more familiar with the issue tracking tools should take the time to clarify an issue or transfer it to the correct repository instead of demanding the reporter do so

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     Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh: (cassidy@mastodon.blaede.family)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Nov-2023 04:48:34 JST Cassidy James :eos: :gg: :fh:

     in reply to

     @allanday some things learned from elementary:

     • Issue templates help, but aren't a cure-all (people will find a way to ignore it)

     • Phrase the issue template around the problem instead of a proposed solution

     • It is always helpful to acknowledge an issue even if it's invalid in some way; to the reporter, they have spent their time interrupting their day to deal with a possibly-unfamiliar process of giving you feedback. Thank them!