Subject: [sipcore] Tracker Etiquette

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:57:16 -0500

[as chair]

The issue tracker has been introduced without much in the way of 
guidelines. I think that, used correctly, it can be very useful for 
making sure specific issues don't get lost in the noise. It saves 
authors the work of exhaustively trawling the mailing list to make 
certain everything has been addressed.

However.

If we generate so many tickets that document authors spend more time 
closing tickets than actually fixing the document, then the tracker 
becomes a liability instead of an asset.

For right now, I'd like us to adjust how we deal with nits and editorial 
comments. For the most part, these should be sent to the list or 
directly to the author to be addressed (i.e., no need to open a ticket). 
Tracking these isn't important or even all that useful; if we miss one, 
then the paid RFC editor staff whose job it is to address these kinds of 
errors will probably catch it.

Larger or more structural issues can be entered into the tracker -- but 
please don't enter each such editorial comment into a new ticket. Gather 
all of your non-technical comments together, and put them in a single 
ticket.

Finally, it would be helpful to document authors if you included 
something in the ticket name that indicated which document the tracker 
issue is on. It doesn't have to be a whole document name; something like 
"4244bis" for the history-info draft would be sufficient.

Thank you.

/a

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From: "James M. Polk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:37:07 -0500

At 02:57 PM 8/31/2010, Adam Roach wrote:

>something in the ticket name that indicated which document the 
>tracker issue is on. It doesn't have to be a whole document name; 
>something like "4244bis" for the history-info draft would be sufficient.

Amen

tracking which issues pertain to which docs is a fundamental flaw in 
this whole process regardless of the WG or doc involved.

James

>Thank you.
>
>/a
>_______________________________________________
>sipcore mailing list
>[email-masked]
>https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/sipcore

---

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:47:22 -0400

[as chair]

I've been ignoring the tracker till now, but it seems impossible to 
continue doing so.

ISTM we do need some group norms on this.
Especially given my lack of experience with the tool, I'm reluctant to 
impose them, at least *yet*. Instead, I'd like to see some discussion on 
how people think this should be used.

Here are a few questions that come to mind:

- can anybody create a new topic? Or should the topics be controlled
   in some way? (e.g. consensus)

- can anybody create a new ticket? Or should ticket issuance be
   controlled in some way? (e.g. consensus)

- is creating a ticket done after discussion, or in lieu of discussion?

- who is responsible for assigning ownership of a ticket?
   can the author pick anybody he wants? Or should people only be
   allowed to assign ownership to themself?  Or should there be
   ownership of topics?

- who can close a ticket? The reporter? The owner? Anybody?

I'd like to hear what people in this WG think about this. (My own first 
reaction is that it would be helpful for wg doc editors to use tracker 
for those things that need to be addressed in a document, based on 
emails from others. I'm not so sure about use beyond that, but have an 
open mind.)

Should I have created a tracker topic "Tracker Etiquette" and submitted 
tickets for each of these questions, rather than sending this mail?

	Thanks,
	Paul

James M. Polk wrote:
>> issue is on. It doesn't have to be a whole document name; something 
>> like "4244bis" for the history-info draft would be sufficient.
> 
> Amen
>

---

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:55:39 -0400

This is all good. One comment below.

> "4244bis" for the history-info draft would be sufficient.

I find that the tool for entering tickets provides a drop down listing 
(I guess) topics that have already been used, so its easy to reuse an 
existing topic. ISTM that we should be conservative in the number of 
topics used. One per document ought to be enough in most cases.

	Thanks,
	Paul

---

From: Hadriel Kaplan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:51:30 -0400

I believe Adam's statements were regarding Editorial comments in particular, not technical issues. (right?)

I had assumed the author would want those in the tracker too, just so they could track them instead of searching mailing lists.  But I was adding "Editorial:" to the beginning of their subjects to differentiate them. (someone should get the tracker tools folks to create a ticket type field to capture this I guess)  But yeah I suppose we should aggregate our Editorial entries into one ticket as much as possible. (my bad)

-hadriel

---

From: "James M. Polk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:46:30 -0500

ISTM that the first order of business wrt Tickets is to correlate 
them to a particular document. Perhaps this is a pull down tab with 
minimal ids for each WG item we have (e.g., 'hi' for history-info, 
and 'loc' for Location Conveyance). The note to the list will already 
say it's [sipcore], so this second level of identification allows doc 
editors to quickly know whether a ticket (in the subject line of the 
note to the list) is for 'their' doc or not.

I think the chairs ought to assign what they think is best for a doc 
identifier.

BTW - Geopriv and ECRIT use tickets, but not the doc identifiers, and 
as an author of more than one ID within each group, it's a real bitch 
(sorry ladies) to track them in my mail app.

Also, personally I don't like tickets being generated about one of my 
docs without any discussion - mostly because I feel kinda blindsided 
by having to account for another topic without having a chance to 
explain whether or not I believe that ticket's topic is already 
covered (or not). In other words, I personally don't have an issue 
with bonafide open issues - whether technical or editorial - but I'd 
like the opportunity to address the topic before it becomes a ticket.

I believe all the rest of Paul's points fall under these above, and 
can be worked out.

Maybe that's just how I think...

comments?

James

At 04:47 PM 8/31/2010, Paul Kyzivat wrote:
>Especially given my lack of experience with the tool, I'm reluctant 
>to impose them, at least *yet*. Instead, I'd like to see some 
>discussion on how people think this should be used.
>
>I'd like to hear what people in this WG think about this. (My own 
>first reaction is that it would be helpful for wg doc editors to use 
>tracker for those things that need to be addressed in a document, 
>based on emails from others. I'm not so sure about use beyond that, 
>but have an open mind.)
>
>Should I have created a tracker topic "Tracker Etiquette" and 
>submitted tickets for each of these questions, rather than sending this mail?
>
>         Thanks,
>         Paul
>
>James M. Polk wrote:
>>tracking which issues pertain to which docs is a fundamental flaw 
>>in this whole process regardless of the WG or doc involved.
>>James
>>
>>>Thank you.
>>>
>>>/a

---

From: "Worley, Dale R (Dale)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:21:41 -0400

I've been assuming that the tracker is to be used much like a technical support tracker -- it's assumed that duplicate and mistaken tickets will be entered, and often variants of existing tickets, and that there are facilities for easily closing tickets that prove to be useless, and for consolidating tickets that are partially or completely duplicates.  Maybe I'm mistaken; I'm assuming that closing a ticket is not difficult.

In regard to putting something in the "ticket name" to indicate the document in question:  I see a data field "Component" for which one can select the value "4244bis".  I've been assuming that is how one identifies the tickets that are relevant to 4244bis.  Is this not the correct thing to do?  I do not see a data field named "ticket name".

Dale

---

From: "James M. Polk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:00:30 -0500

At 09:21 PM 8/31/2010, Worley, Dale R (Dale) wrote:

>In regard to putting something in the "ticket name" to indicate the 
>document in question:  I see a data field "Component" for which one 
>can select the value "4244bis".

I don't see "4244bis" in the subject line, which is ideally what I'm 
asking for - so I can track those messages pertinent to my doc, even 
though I care a lot about every SIPCORE doc, the one I'm responsible 
for is more important - right?

If it could show up as

         Subject: [sipcore] 4244bis: ...
or
         Subject: [sipcore] Loc: ...

then it can be tracked by everyone (especially the editors) easier ISTM.

james

>I've been assuming that is how one identifies the tickets that are 
>relevant to 4244bis.  Is this not the correct thing to do?  I do not 
>see a data field named "ticket name".
>
>Dale

---

From: "Elwell, John" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2010 08:37:35 +0200

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of James M. Polk
> Sent: 01 September 2010 01:47
> To: Paul Kyzivat; James M. Polk
> Cc: SIPCORE
> Subject: Re: [sipcore] Tracker Etiquette
> 
[JRE] MARTINI has used tickets, fairly successfully I think. We are starting to use them in SIPREC, but we have limited experience to date. In both groups, anyone can generate a ticket (or reopen a closed one), which does lead to a free-for-all Potentially it could be a problem, so if we constrain it I would like at least the chairs, not just the editor, to have the ability to open a ticket (assigned to the editor).

John