dormant bugs and our perception

[Elliot Lee]

On Jan 2, 2008 8:04 AM, Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk at redhat.com> wrote:

> Honestly, it's pretty thankless work.
>
> What we need is a leader.  Someone who wants to step up and say "we will
> have Fedora bug days every Friday (or whatever) from this time to this
> time, and I will be in #fedora-qa doing it myself, and teaching everyone
> else who wants to learn."
>
> I would do it, but, um, I'm washing my hair on Fridays.  ;)

I think this is the heart of the problem (not the washing hair, the
thankless work bit...) The only person I can recall who was ever a
Rock Star Bug Triager was Kjartan Maraas for GNOME, and I think he did
it out of dedication rather than sheer enjoyment, because he had the
talent to work on a lot of other stuff as well.

So there's a situation where some valuable work needs to be done, but
it's a big task, and nobody really enjoys doing it. Here are some
ideas:
. Make sure that it's only a lack of motivation that is keeping people
from contributing, and not a perceived lack of opportunity, resources,
or knowledge.
. Fix incentives. Maybe it means point system for rewarding people,
maybe it means free FUDcon trips, maybe it means improved recognition,
maybe it means hiring someone.
. Figure out what part of triaging /is/ enjoyable, and articulate it
well in a call for contributors.
. Divide & conquer. Maybe you can't get five people working steadily
on bug triaging, but you might be able to get fifty Fedora
contributors triaging one bug per person per week. If you could write
a piece of infrastructure that decided which bugs needed triaging,
it'd be easy enough to have that infrastructure send an e-mail out
once a week to those fifty people ("Greg, Please triage bug #45678")
and track who was actually doing their part. You may want to wash your
hair on Fridays, but don't tell me you wouldn't be willing to triage
one bug a week...?

Hope this helps,
-- Elliot