[Pmwiki-users] Re: PITS?

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud
Mon Oct 25 14:17:03 CDT 2004


On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 09:00:11PM +0200, chr at home.se wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> > http://www.pmwiki.org/PITS is the PITS home page, with
> > http://www.pmwiki.org/PITS/NewIssue as the form for entering a new
> > issue.
> 
> So there is no difference between doing a PITS for PmWiki 1 or PmWiki 2?

Right, I didn't want to have to look multiple places for issue tracking
requests, and didn't want people to have to worry about putting issues
into the correct site.  They all go to the same place, regardless of
version.

> Yes, I *will* go and read those pages (now), but maybe some PITS
> instructions could be useful for the rest of the list readers?

Sure--I even have a link to http://www.pmwiki.org/PITS/Guidelines on
the NewIssue page--but I just haven't gotten around to writing any.
Often I wish my speed at writing usable documentation could match my
speed for writing usable program code.  1/2 :-)

The guidelines are as follows:

- PITS largely replaces the Development.DevelopmentPriority and
  Development.KnownBugs pages that were at pmwiki.org.

- If you have an issue they'd like to see addressed, first briefly 
  check the list of open and suspended issues at http://www.pmwiki.org/PITS
  to see if someone else has already made a PITS entry for it.

- If so, then you can edit the PITS entry to add more details,
  opinions, or even add your vote as to the issue's priority.  Issues
  with higher priority votes tend to get greater attention.  (See below.)

- If no issue has yet been registered, click on the NewIssue link 
  (or go to http://www.pmwiki.org/PITS/NewIssue) and fill out the
  form to add the new issue to the tracking system.  Make sure the
  title is suggestive enough that others can understand the issue
  (and add their votes to the priority), and for bug reports make sure 
  the description includes enough details that someone can observe or
  duplicate the bug so a fix can be found.

- The description text is just wiki text, so it's okay to include links
  to other pages and sites to further demonstrate or explain the issue.

- The status of each issue is typically given as one of:
    "open" -- new issues and issues still under consideration
    "confirmed" -- the issue has been confirmed to exist but still needs a fix
    "awaiting feedback" -- more information is needed before the issue can
        be addressed
    "ToDo" -- Pm has it on his "to do" list of things to be addressed
    "suspended" -- the issue has been indefinitely postponed due to
        technical difficulty or lack of interest
    "closed" -- the issue has been resolved

A note about how I view the priorities:  The priorities are primarily
advisory, but they do carry a lot of weight with me, especially if there
are a large number of votes.  But when setting out to work on something
I examine not only an issue's priority but also its difficulty and the
impacts it might have on other features in the overall systems.  So, 
issues that are listed low or medium priority but otherwise easily 
addressed may get taken care of quickly, while high priority issues
that require lots of planning and effort may take longer to be addressed.

But it's also worth pointing out that if an issue is especially important 
to you and you want to get beyond simple appeals to my reason, it is 
possible to use economic and market incentives to adjust my perceptions 
of issues' priorities :-) :-).  
(See http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/SendPmMoney).  

Pm



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