launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

2010/1/9 Deryck Hodge <deryck.hodge@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Hi, Martin.
>
> Thanks for the notes about what you're thinking!  Graham was actually
> going to try to get time with you early next week to talk about bug
> heat UI, so it's timely.  I have some initial questions/thoughts as I
> look at this, too.

Hi,

https://dev.launchpad.net/Bugs/BugHeat says that the algorithm for bug
heat has now been designed, but it doesn't say what it is.  Could you
put it up there, or tell us?

> On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 2:18 PM, Martin Albisetti
> <martin.albisetti@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 1) New page: a list of bugs ordered by bug heat. The problems here to solve
>> here are:
>
> Why a new page?  Why not just use the existing hot bugs section of a
> project's home page?  This is what we talked about when you, Tom, and
> I talked about bug heat at UDS.  Granted we should show more bugs or
> click through to a complete list of bugs with any heat, but why think
> of this as a new page?  It's really just a bug list like any other bug
> list, no?

fwiw I think the 'hot list' on the home page works reasonably well at
showing some important bugs, including those bugs that may need
attention but that haven't been handled yet.  It's good already.

"by heat" in the sort dropdown could be good.

I don't think I care about knowing a specific heat metric, since the
numbers will be arbitrary.  What I would like is an in-page link going
to a help page explaining how heat is calculated.

When looking at a particular bug, if the heat algorithm is sane, I
probably don't want to really see the number - it should be evident
from the age, affect count, activity etc?  What might be interesting
though is to show "4th hottest bug in bzr".  I'm assuming if you can
sort by this you can quickly calculate it on demand, though perhaps it
could be done in batch and cached, or shown as something approximate
like "top-100 bug".  Think of what Amazon does for hot reviewers or
books.

>>    - how to show relative values well (ie, bug 123 is 10 times hotter than
>> 122, which comes right after 123 on the list). One idea would be to color
>> code the background
>
> Citing our talks at UDS again, I thought we talked about some kind of
> heat icon like the flame icon for affected users.  Could we just steal
> the current flame icon since 1) affected users shows the number now,
> and 2) affected users will factor into heat?  We could have differing
> shades of red/orange for levels of heat and/or have slightly larger
> flames for hotter levels.

Does it actually matter?  This seems likely to just highlight glitches
in the formula as much as anything else.  If the developer has read
far enough down the list that the bugs are no longer very hot at all,
they'll probably realize that.

It's a bit like the 'affects user' feature: now that you can see what
it is on the bug page, people believe in it.  The 'bugs by most
affected users' page is useful in finding important-but-neglected
bugs, even though it doesn't actually show the count.

>
>>    - How do we allow dropping bugs from the list by developers who really
>> don't want it there?  There should probably be a manual knob to do this.
>
> I'm not in favor of dropping bugs, certainly not manually, which
> defeats the whole point of a computed value of heat.  IMHO, If a bug
> is hot, it's hot.  Why do you want a bug to disappear from a list of
> hot bugs?  Why not use milestones, series, tags or status to control
> management of a list?  Or any other search/bug list, which could then
> be sorted by heat?  Removing bugs takes away the whole point of it
> being a computed value.

presumably heat takes status/importance into account, so developers
can just mark it wontfix or wishlist if they want to degrade it?

> I remember discussions about this at UDS with you, and I was never
> fully convinced.  After thinking some more about it, it just seems
> like a bad idea.  I know you're concerned about a bug that a team may
> want to put off working on indefinitely and yet it's still in the list
> annoying them, but I think we need to get the algorithm right so this
> doesn't happen or the project should use Won't Fix or Invalid to be
> honest about intent.

That's an important case.

>> 2) How do you access the page above? (from where, what text, etc)
>
> I think this should just be the hot bugs section of the the bugs home
> page, with a link to all bugs with any heat value.  I'm not in favor
> of a "XXX hot bugs" filter unless it's just the most hot bugs.  But
> I'm not sure what a link would say.  "XXX really really hot bugs" ?
> :-)
>
> It might be interesting to prompt with something to the effect of "see
> potentially bad bugs here" type links somewhere.  I'm not sure where,
> or what that text should actually be.  But it might be interesting and
> useful if done right.

I'd like to just have "(more)" next to the hot bugs on the home page,
taking you to the batched list of all hot bugs.

Maybe you can count how many people visit that page?

If people find this useful and wish it was linked from the portlets,
they'll tell you.

>> 3) How do you display the hotness of the bug from the bug page?  Currently
>> we show the number of affected users, just slapping this on the page will
>> confuse it since the number of affected users are part of the heat. This
>> page will probably require some re-thinking in a more general way to
>> introduce it.
>
> Yeah, this gets tricky.  The only thought I have now is to steal away
> the flame icon, place it somewhere away from the affected users count,
> and have the icon be different color and larger depending on the heat
> of the bug.  But what goes in this place if there is no heat value?
> And maybe this is a terrible idea.  I'll note that it's late for me if
> it is. ;)

I think: don't worry about this for now.  Put the formula into the
help wiki.  Maybe later, as robert suggests, put on a portlet showing:

 severity important + 45 affected + last change 12 hours ago +
milestone in 3 days == hottness 1234

How about a survey, on the lp blog, asking people if the hot bugs list
works for them?

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>