<div dir="ltr">I'm fine with the plan but I'm pretty wary that none of the program managers have said anything, and they're the ones that make use of the flag the most. So I've copied some of them in to make sure they've seen this thread and Justin's proposal to stop using the firefox-backlog flag.<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 9:41 PM, Justin Dolske <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dolske@mozilla.com" target="_blank">dolske@mozilla.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div>I also don't think this flag is useful.<br><br></div>The basic problem is that Firefox is a huge, complicated piece of software and the set of people working on it (staff + volunteers) is tiny. The flag was intended as a mechanism to help track relevant bugs that we're not currently working on, but I think we just ended up with (1) varying criteria for what bugs should be marked backlog+ (2) a smaller but still unwieldy set of of bugs and (3) some people simply stopping usage of it because it's effectiveness was unclear.<br><br></div>AFAIK the backlog+ list has never been triaged or prioritized. Nor is it clear to me that would actually be an effective use of time -- it would be spending a lot of time to maintain a wishlist of bugs that will mostly not be worked on. And priorities quickly become stale as the browser market evolves.<br><br></div>So, to make this thread a bit more actionable: I propose that that we go ahead and deprecate this flag. As a first step we can freeze the existing set of bugs with it set, and remove the ability to set/request it on further bugs. Projects areas can track their own project-specific backlogs with priorities, whiteboard tags, metabugs, spreadsheets, etc. If you have a demonstrably useful need for the flag, speak now or forever hold your peace. :)<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br><br></font></span></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">Justin<br></font></span></div><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 10:53 AM, Christopher Karlof <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ckarlof@mozilla.com" target="_blank">ckarlof@mozilla.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Now that my role has become more of, as my wife says, “one of those people that flips a lot bugzilla flags”, I’m guilty as charged.<div><br></div><div>I largely adopted it because it was trying to adopt the larger convention, but I agree that filtering searches to P1-Px for a backlog would work equally well of me.</div><div><br></div><div>A quick test of that would require me to triage/de-prioritize an additional legacy 100 bugs to get back to the curated backlog I created with firefox-backlog, but that’s the cost of doing business.</div><div><br></div><div>I don’t have a lot of context around the original intention of the flag, and am happy to learn any new spells.</div><div><br></div><div>-chris</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 12:35 AM, Sebastian Zartner <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sebastianzartner@gmail.com" target="_blank">sebastianzartner@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>As far as I understand firefox-backlog it is for issues that are lying around for long and need prioritization.[1] So it sounds like it fulfills a different purpose than P1 to P5.<br><br></div>The question is whether this flag is still used as Gavin imagined it to work, i.e. if there's still some backlog management as described in the wiki[2].<br><div><br>I guess it needs to be clarified how the process of prioritizing bugs works and there need to people tasked to do this priorization and keep track of it for all bugs, e.g. the module owners.<br><br></div><div>My opinion is that the firefox-backlog flag would not be needed if P1, P2, etc. were set consistently and always be considered. E.g. at the moment there are a lot of old bugs having P1.[3]<br>Also, prioritization needs to be based on many factors like security, number of affected people, severity, votes, other implementations, specifications, etc.<br></div><br><div>Sebastian<br></div><div><br>[1] <a href="https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/firefox-dev/2014-April/001551.html" target="_blank">https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/firefox-dev/2014-April/001551.html</a><br>[2] <a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/IterativeDevelopment#Product_Backlog" target="_blank">https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/IterativeDevelopment#Product_Backlog</a><br></div><div>[3] <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?priority=P1&list_id=12440512&resolution=---&chfieldto=2010-12-31&query_format=advanced&chfield=[Bug%20creation]" target="_blank">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?priority=P1&list_id=12440512&resolution=---&chfieldto=2010-12-31&query_format=advanced&chfield=[Bug%20creation]</a><br></div><div><a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=825294#c4" target="_blank"></a></div></div><div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 3 August 2015 at 04:45, Matthew N. <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:MattN+firefox-dev@mozilla.com" target="_blank">MattN+firefox-dev@mozilla.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">I had the same reaction: the priority field overlaps with the backlog flag.<br><br>One thing that that the backlog flag has that the priority flag doesn't is a way to nominate a bug for review of the priority via "firefox-backlog?". One could argue that every bug without an assigned priority could fall into this category but then we would want to either regularly triage recently filed bugs to set a priority on them or do a pass on all existing bugs to assign a priority making it easy to see unprioritized bugs. In general I'm not a fan of new BMO fields or whiteboard/keyword metadata that duplicate or overlap with existing metadata.<br><br>On a related note, I'm not a fan of fine-grained prioritization for low priority bugs (e.g. like the Rank field is doing). In general, it seems like either a bug is important (represented as P1, maybe P2) or it's not and so thinking about P4 vs. P5 doesn't seem useful as the reality is that neither of them are going to end up in a prioritized backlog. The only way they'll get fixed is if someone is scratching their own itch or the priority changes.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Another "feature" of firefox-backlog+ is that only a limited set of users can set this state. This avoids having to manually police people marking pet bugs as a priority despite the views of the module owner/peers. Maybe the existing BMO groups like canconfirm/editbugs already cover the priority field though (maybe not for bugs by the reporter?).<span><font color="#888888"><br></font></span></div><span><font color="#888888"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Matthew<br></div></font></span></div><div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Aug 2, 2015 at 5:53 PM, Mark Hammond <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mhammond@mozilla.com" target="_blank">mhammond@mozilla.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span>On 1/08/2015 9:34 AM, Christopher Karlof wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
I just started using the flag today to build a Desktop Sync backlog.<br>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
I've noticed bugs being changed in this way, and also the same set of bugs having the "importance" field changed (ie, a number of bugs set to P1, P2, etc).<br>
<br>
I don't understand the use of both of these. Can't the current Sync backlog be determined based on the importance? What would a P1 bug without that flag mean relative to a P5 with it?<br>
<br>
So I agree with Matt - it became clear to me very soon after the backlog flag was added that the sheer number of items marked with the flag made it useless for both filtering and prioritization, and I expect this to continue to be true for Sync. I don't mind continuing to ignore it completely, but I'd prefer to just see it die.<br>
<br>
Mark<br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span>
<br>
-chris<br>
<br>
<br>
On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 2:08 PM, Matthew N.<br></span>
<<a href="mailto:MattN%2Bfirefox-dev@mozilla.com" target="_blank">MattN+firefox-dev@mozilla.com</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:MattN%2Bfirefox-dev@mozilla.com" target="_blank">MattN+firefox-dev@mozilla.com</a>>><div><div><br>
wrote:<br>
<br>
I just had a realization that now that we're not using a single<br>
backlog for all desktop work (we have various smaller project<br>
teams), it's not clear to me what the purpose of the firefox-backlog<br>
flag is. There are 1629 bugs set to '+'[1] which seems like a lot<br>
given that this flag was intended as a way to mark bugs that we<br>
would likely work on in approximately the next 6 months. There are<br>
bugs in there that don't seem like they are actually things we want<br>
to do.<br>
<br>
I'm curious to hear how/if people are currently using the flag and<br>
whether anyone is actually pulling bugs from there outside of bugs<br>
identified for a specific project. There are searches for good bugs<br>
from<br>
<a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/IterativeDevelopment#Contribute_to_Firefox_Desktop" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/IterativeDevelopment#Contribute_to_Firefox_Desktop</a><br>
but I don't know if contributors are using them over bugsahoy.<br>
<br>
Perhaps the backlog is the place where the upcoming quality teams<br>
will pull from as its ideally identifying important issues in all<br>
of our components. A follow-up question would be if anyone is<br>
pruning this list?<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
Matthew N. (:MattN)<br>
<br>
[1]<br>
<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?f1=flagtypes.name&list_id=12437184&o1=equals&query_format=advanced&resolution=---&v1=firefox-backlog%2B&order=bug_id&limit=0" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?f1=flagtypes.name&list_id=12437184&o1=equals&query_format=advanced&resolution=---&v1=firefox-backlog%2B&order=bug_id&limit=0</a><br>
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