launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Tom Berger <tom.berger@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

2010/1/14 Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> 2010/1/14 Tom Berger <tom.berger@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>>> My vote is for simpler-is-better - i.e. 3 icons representing low,
>>> medium and high bug heat. At least for the first iteration of this
>>> feature (incremental improvement and all that).
>
> I'm verging on bikeshedding, but let's try to make sure the visual
> indication of non-hot bugs is quite unobtrusive, so that the hot ones
> stand out.  A pale grey badge (or indeed none at all) going up to a
> bright red badge would be better in this regard than a scale from blue
> to red, or small red things to large red things.
>
>> I very much agree. Not just because it's simpler for us, but because I
>> think it will be simpler for the users. For the same reason I think
>> that we should resist displaying any concrete number, as was suggested
>> earlier. My concern is that the more we expose the machinery behind
>> hotness (in the UI) the more users will fixate on it, trying to
>> manipulate their pet bugs to get a higher rank, complaining when they
>> don't and using the number as a voodoo device when they make decisions
>> about bug. The information about hotness is only useful in relative
>> terms, and will change over time, so I think that sorting + putting
>> bugs in one of three bins (or should i say binns) will give users all
>> the information they need, without distracting from the core
>> information - the bug itself.
>
> Hearty +1, these are obvious lessons from karma here.
>
> However, I do think we should still document the algorithm in the help
> wiki, so people can understand its limitations, so they may be able to
> help improve it, and just from the general principle of transparency.

Absolutely. LP is  an open, free software project, so there's no
secrecy, and properly documenting and explaining how the system works
is part of making the system more approachable to users.