Hello Crash Reporting Working Group!

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William Kahn-Greene

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Mar 31, 2021, 10:56:54 AM3/31/21
to crash-reporting-wg
Hi!

You're getting this email because I probably subscribed you to this list because I thought you were an important part of the crash reporting ecosystem at Mozilla. If that's not the case, my sincerest apologies.


Why a Crash Reporting Working Group?

Over the years, we've had conclaves in out-of-the-way seedy corners of All Hands and other venues to talk about where we all were at and the needs of different groups.

We don't have All Hands anymore, so it's harder to have these conversations. Further, I claim it's really hard for people who are "in the know" to know what's going on outside of their specific focus and for people who aren't "in the know", it's impossible to get help and support for all things crash reporting. I claim we're in a tough situation. Plus on top of that, people are coming and going and we're losing historical knowledge and things are probably getting dropped and it's just getting harder.

So, towards that, I've been working with Gabriele and others to form a pan-Mozilla Crash Reporting Working Group that let's us:

1. create a support funnel for all things crash reporting and crash reporting related
2. coordinate work we're doing and help each other out
3. improve documentation, specifications, and tooling for crash reporting things

I wanted to set up more of the working group things, but it's taking me so long to do that, I figured I'd send this email out now and get to other things later.


Wiki and communication

I started documenting the working group in the wiki here:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Data/WorkingGroups/CrashReporting

There's a bunch of stuff to flesh out, we'll get there as we get there.

The working group will "hang out" in three places:

1. the crash-reporting-wg mailing list
2. the #crashreporting Matrix channel
3. the #crash-reporting-help Slack channel (solely for supporting people who aren't into Matrix)

To coordinate better, I want to do some kind of periodic "where is everyone at?" email thread with prompts along the lines of what have you accomplished, what are you working on, what you need help with, fears/concerns. Everyone's free to send emails to the list between these periodic prompts, but we rely on the prompts for periodic "what's going on" things.

Also, someone (probably me for now) can collect status into a This Month in Crash Reporting email and send it to dev-platform and other venues.

I'd like to use the #crashreporting Matrix channel for figuring stuff out. If something happens on that channel that we think everyone should know about, someone should capture it in an email and send it to the working group. That captures things in the archives and it makes it easier on everyone who isn't (or can't) pay attention to the Matrix channel.

That's what I was thinking. If this works, great! If it doesn't, we can adjust as we go along.


Electing myself coordinator for now

I think working groups benefit from having someone coordinate them. Given that I threw this all together, it felt feckless to then foist that responsibility on someone else. I figure I can coordinate for now and we can figure out what to do if I run out of steam or do a lousy job or whatever.


Things you can help with over the next couple of weeks

If you've read this far, I'd really appreciate help for two things:

1. If you know people who work on crash reporting related things, let them know about this working group. I'm sure I missed people when building the initial subscriber list.

2. If you work on crash reporting related things that someone might need support with, please add your things to the "Crash reporting projects/teams" section. I think a critical part of a functional support funnel is having a centralized list of who works on what. We will update this as people move around and projects come and go.


Summary

If you have ideas on other things we can do through/with the working group that makes things better, I'm all ears. We probably can't do most things, but I want to prioritize the things that get us a lot of value and make our lives easier.

I hope this initiative is helpful for us and everyone we support. If it doesn't work out--that's ok!--we'll just brush the charred husk aside and try something different.

Expect a "where are things at?" email on April 1st.

Rock on!

/will

Gabriele Svelto

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Mar 31, 2021, 5:04:51 PM3/31/21
to William Kahn-Greene, crash-reporting-wg
Thanks again for doing this Will,
as usual I'm trying to pull everybody into the #crashreporting channel
but having a widely distributed "this month in crash reporting"
newsletter would be great. It doesn't even need to be long because we
usually only a handful of things worth of note in a month but that's
better because it would make people more likely to read it compared to a
WOT.

I think it would be a good idea to at least cross-post some announcement
to dev-platform and possibly firefox-dev too so that people are aware
that there is a new resource where they can ask questions, look for help
and get involved.

Gabriele

On 3/31/21 4:56 PM, William Kahn-Greene wrote:
> Hi!
>
> You're getting this email because I probably subscribed you to this list
> because I thought you were an important part of the crash reporting
> ecosystem at Mozilla. If that's not the case, my sincerest apologies.
>
>
> *Why a Crash Reporting Working Group?*
>
> Over the years, we've had conclaves in out-of-the-way seedy corners of
> All Hands and other venues to talk about where we all were at and the
> needs of different groups.
>
> We don't have All Hands anymore, so it's harder to have these
> conversations. Further, I claim it's really hard for people who are "in
> the know" to know what's going on outside of their specific focus and
> for people who aren't "in the know", it's impossible to get help and
> support for all things crash reporting. I claim we're in a tough
> situation. Plus on top of that, people are coming and going and we're
> losing historical knowledge and things are probably getting dropped and
> it's just getting harder.
>
> So, towards that, I've been working with Gabriele and others to form a
> pan-Mozilla Crash Reporting Working Group that let's us:
>
> 1. create a support funnel for all things crash reporting and crash
> reporting related
> 2. coordinate work we're doing and help each other out
> 3. improve documentation, specifications, and tooling for crash
> reporting things
>
> I wanted to set up more of the working group things, but it's taking me
> so long to do that, I figured I'd send this email out now and get to
> other things later.
>
>
> *Wiki and communication*
>
> I started documenting the working group in the wiki here:
>
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Data/WorkingGroups/CrashReporting
> <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Data/WorkingGroups/CrashReporting>
>
> There's a bunch of stuff to flesh out, we'll get there as we get there.
>
> The working group will "hang out" in three places:
>
> 1. the crash-reporting-wg mailing list
> 2. the #crashreporting Matrix channel
> 3. the #crash-reporting-help Slack channel (solely for supporting people
> who aren't into Matrix)
>
> To coordinate better, I want to do some kind of periodic "where is
> everyone at?" email thread with prompts along the lines of what have you
> accomplished, what are you working on, what you need help with,
> fears/concerns. Everyone's free to send emails to the list between these
> periodic prompts, but we rely on the prompts for periodic "what's going
> on" things.
>
> Also, someone (probably me for now) can collect status into a This Month
> in Crash Reporting email and send it to dev-platform and other venues.
>
> I'd like to use the #crashreporting Matrix channel for figuring stuff
> out. If something happens on that channel that we think everyone should
> know about, someone should capture it in an email and send it to the
> working group. That captures things in the archives and it makes it
> easier on everyone who isn't (or can't) pay attention to the Matrix channel.
>
> That's what I was thinking.If this works, great! If it doesn't, we can
> adjust as we go along.
>
>
> *Electing myself coordinator for now*
>
> I think working groups benefit from having someone coordinate them.
> Given that I threw this all together, it felt feckless to then foist
> that responsibility on someone else. I figure I can coordinate for now
> and we can figure out what to do if I run out of steam or do a lousy job
> or whatever.
>
>
> *Things you can help with over the next couple of weeks*
>
> If you've read this far, I'd really appreciate help for two things:
>
> 1. If you know people who work on crash reporting related things, let
> them know about this working group. I'm sure I missed people when
> building the initial subscriber list.
>
> 2. If you work on crash reporting related things that someone might need
> support with, please add your things to the "Crash reporting
> projects/teams" section. I think a critical part of a functional support
> funnel is having a centralized list of who works on what. We will update
> this as people move around and projects come and go.
>
>
> *Summary*
>
> If you have ideas on other things we can do through/with the working
> group that makes things better, I'm all ears. We probably can't do most
> things, but I want to prioritize the things that get us a lot of value
> and make our lives easier.
>
> I hope this initiative is helpful for us and everyone we support. If it
> doesn't work out--that's ok!--we'll just brush the charred husk aside
> and try something different.
>
> Expect a "where are things at?" email on April 1st.
>
> Rock on!
>
> /will
>
> --
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