launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 15 November 2011 14:49, Huw Wilkins <huw.wilkins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Let's talk about the bug start page for projects. I'm talking about pages
> like this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad

I agree with a lot of what's been said and I think it's great that
we're going to improve this.

Unifying the top-level page with +bugs has value in itself, just so
that you can start searching and sorting without doing anything else.

We ought to consider what people are trying to do when they visit that
page.  One likely thing is to file a new bug; I wish they could start
typing and at least kick off the dupefinder, without a separate page
load.

For projects I work on, I think the views I typically want to see are,
in rough order:

 * inprogress bugs, including the assignee
 * new bugs, needing triage
 * recently changed bugs
 * bugs affecting me
 * critical bugs
 * highest-impact/highest-heat bugs
 * recently closed bugs

For projects where I am just a user I would like to:

 * see the ~hottest bugs, to know if the thing I'm hitting is already known
 * report a new bug
 * get a feeling for what the project is doing and what they're working on

Across Launchpad generally closed bugs are very hard to find, but
recently closed bugs are often very interesting.

I wish we would use some metrics to infer what people are actually
trying to do.  Which bug sort orders are most common?  Which portal
links do they click?  I wonder if we can make the bugs home page
remember what the user wants to see, then consider making the most
popular ones the default.

Perhaps changes we make to the bugs home page can be done with a view
to eventually having just one product-wide home page.

Something like heat, as a gestalt metric of 'impact' of bugs, has
potential value as an ordering between bugs (especially if the inputs
and their weightings are improved), to give you a gestalt of which
bugs have the most impact.  However, showing it as a number or on a
scale seems pointless: "four flames" never consistently means anything
other than that the context for the bug probably has few bugs in it.
I agree the heat is both skewed by overweighting was-once-private
bugs, and also boring in that bugs eventually get stuck there.

-- 
Martin