Staying 3digit with open issues

TheDog

Close the lot.

Why?
On the current very stable version of 2.5.22294 I would say almost all the map related errors are caused by the players themselves, not giving themselves a decent amount of RAM or a reboot before they play a game.

However, I think the forum moderators probably know the real outstanding issues and they should drive any spare dev time.

Maybe the moderators collectively should between themselves pick the top 3 issues to be fixed, get the background and saved games from the player(s) for the dev, so the dev does not have to do it.

This way when a dev has spare time he has a list of just 3 real issues, with backgrounds, they can pick one of the 3 and fix it?

beelee

@thedog said in Staying 3digit with open issues:

Close the lot.

:beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes:

LaFayette

@thedog said in Staying 3digit with open issues:

Maybe the moderators collectively should between themselves pick the top 3 issues to be fixed, get the background and saved games from the player(s) for the dev, so the dev does not have to do it.

I like this thinking. What if the top 3 are not easily fixed? Nonetheless, having a list of clean issues ready to be worked on would go a long way, I support anything that helps move us in that direction.

As an idea to consider: The 'projects' feature could be a way to help bucket and group items. Not all items need to be issues perhaps and can instead be converted to project cards (if there is not that much to have written, if the idea is still very early, and if there has not yet been much discussion). For example, we could have a project of 'improve game rules', 'improve game stability', etc.. Perhaps we could do a 'enhancements & features' one of some sort.

LaFayette

Another idea, we could de-dupe problem reports on the 'major.minor' version instead of the also using the build number. EG: all 2.6 would be grouped together and de-duped.

Is there a way we can also improve the pre-release problems? It's disheartening to see people using prerelease, which is meant for essentially testers and just demo feedback, submitting bug reports but not following up with details. Notably, who they were that submitted the problem, how they got to the problem. EG: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/10235

This kind of item really just clogs our queue as the problem is well known. Though, because we de-dupe based on full number, we get this brand new every time a new prerelease is downloaded and someone submits this.

TheDog

To reduce the use of pre-release problems we could;

have an approved list of testers/demo users who can give feedback or are flagged as such and therefore have more weight
Feedback must include a saved game
All feedback fields must be filled in

Otherwise it will be rejected or just have less weight

Alternatively the feedback could be awarded points automatically for its content.
Points could be awarded for each field filled in, a saved gamed etc, so the best value feedback is displayed first and least point valued, displayed last.

Panther

A team that evaluates/classifies issues would be a good idea.

This might be useful for separating issues from non-issues.

Sometimes users think they discovered e.g. a rules related issue when it was in fact their misunderstanding of the rules. Also we can sort out problems on the user side, unrelated to the software. Just to name some examples...

LaFayette

@panther I agree that we need such a team and we have touched on that concept in several threads. Resolving issues before they even go further into the queue helps everyone. Identifying misunderstandings is even good opportunities to build features that make rules more clear (eg: warning prompts, notices, toggle settings to turn on/off rule variants etc..) Basically along the philosophy: "the user is not dumb, it's the software's UX that is dumb."

LaFayette

This is the team of 'triagers', currently called 'community' that can do triage of issues: https://github.com/orgs/triplea-game/teams/community/members

I'm interested in formalizing this more and adding more volunteers who can help keep the issue queue well organized.

LaFayette

This PR will help with the missing image reports: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/pull/10257

We can close the missing image reports in the meantime (ideally fix them, though it is stop gap until we complete a longer term solution for missing images).

LaFayette

How do we go to the next steps of having a 'triage' team? Shall we do a roll call of who is interested?

frigoref

@lafayette @Panther @panther2 @beelee
I would rather focus on solving the issues on a code base and ask you to participate in the triage process. Would that be okay for you guys?

LaFayette

@frigoref I'm in the same camp and would prefer to wear fewer hats. Without volunteers, all tasks fall on the maintainers, and again we get back into a pattern where the maintainers are too busy with overhead to actually do anything to move the project forward (this has been a problem repeatedly for the last 12-15 years for this project).

Failing a decent set of volunteers, we'll have to go back to draconian measures like blanket closing old issues, blanket closing issues that are not fully spelled out with clear reproduction cases, etc.. Those measures were very unpopular and created antagonism between those reporting any issues and us who are stuck spending excessive time just understanding what the problem is and recreating it. (CC: @Cernel because you were perhaps the most vocal opponent of the 'ice-boxed issues)

I think the question remains, who can volunteer to do this triage? What are the next steps to get this group off the ground and running?

Panther

@frigoref @LaFayette

I'm in, of course.