Re: The Whiteboard Tag Amnesty

[Kartikaya Gupta]

What happens after June 24? Is the whiteboard field going to be removed?

On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 4:32 PM, Emma Humphries <em...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> tl;dr -- nominate whiteboard tags you want converted to keywords. Do it by
> 24 June 2016.
>
> We have a love-hate relationship with the whiteboard field in bugzilla. On
> one hand, we can add team-specific meta data to a bug. On the other hand,
> it's not a indexed field or a real tag system, making it hard to parse,
> search, and update.
>
> But creating keywords is a hassle since you have to request them.
>
> The long term solution is to turn whiteboard into proper tag system, but
> the Bugzilla Team's offering to help with some bulk conversion of
> whiteboard tags your teams use into keywords.
>
> To participate:
>
> 1. Create a Bug in the bugzilla.mozilla.org::Administration component for each
> whiteboard tag you want to convert.
>
> 2. The bug's description should have the old keyword, the new keyword you
> want to replace it with, and the description of this new keyword which will
> appear in the online help.
>
> 3. Make sure your keyword doesn't conflict with existing keywords, so be
> prepared to rename it. If your keyword is semantically similar to an
> existing keyword or other existing bugzilla field we'll talk you about a
> mass change to your bugs.
>
> 4. Make the parent bug, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1279022,
> depend on your new bug.
>
> 5. CC Emma Humphries on the bug
>
> We will turn your whiteboard tag into a keyword and remove your old tag
> from the whiteboard tags, so make sure your dashboards and other tools that
> consume Bugzilla's API are updated to account for this.
>
> Please submit your whiteboard fields to convert by Friday 24 June 2016.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Emma Humphries
> _______________________________________________
> dev-platform mailing list
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[Emma Humphries]

[Patrick McManus]

as you note the whiteboard tags are permissionless. That's their killer
property. Keywords as you note are not, that's their critical weakness.

instead of fixing that situation in the "long term" can we please fix that
as a precondition of converting things? Mozilla doesn't need more
centralized systems. If they can't be 100% automated to be permissionless
(e.g. perhaps because they don't scale) then the new arrangement of things
is definitely worse.

I'll note that even for triage, our eventual system evolved rapidly and
putting an administrator in the middle to add and drop keywords and
indicies would have just slowed stuff down. Permissionless to me is a
requirement.

On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 2:43 PM, Kartikaya Gupta <kgu...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> What happens after June 24? Is the whiteboard field going to be removed?
>
> On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 4:32 PM, Emma Humphries <em...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> > _______________________________________________
> > dev-platform mailing list
> > dev-pl...@lists.mozilla.org
> > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform

> _______________________________________________
> firefox-dev mailing list
> firef...@mozilla.org
> https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/firefox-dev
>

[Emma Humphries]

> On Jun 8, 2016, at 1:43 PM, Kartikaya Gupta <kgu...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>
> What happens after June 24? Is the whiteboard field going to be removed?
>

No, the whiteboard field remains, but any tags migrated will be deleted from existing values.

If a tag is used across teams, I'll work out a resolution such as both teams using the new keyword, or specific keywords as long as they don't semantically copy other existing fields.

[Patrick McManus]

that's useful thanks. I think the word amnesty implied the death penalty
for existing whiteboard tags.

what it sounds like is you're just offering (for a limited time) to do
conversions on an opt-in basis? That's great.

-P

[Emma Humphries]

Yes, 'amnesty' is probably too strong a term, and 'cleanup' is probably
better.

-- Emma

On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 2:19 PM, Patrick McManus <pmcm...@mozilla.com>
wrote:

[Emma Humphries]

There is a ticket for a "proper" tag system,
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1266609 which given time, I'd
like to get implemented, but with limited resources, this is what I can do
now.

On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 2:08 PM, Patrick McManus <pmcm...@mozilla.com>
wrote:

> as you note the whiteboard tags are permissionless. That's their killer
> property. Keywords as you note are not, that's their critical weakness.
>
> instead of fixing that situation in the "long term" can we please fix that
> as a precondition of converting things? Mozilla doesn't need more
> centralized systems. If they can't be 100% automated to be permissionless
> (e.g. perhaps because they don't scale) then the new arrangement of things
> is definitely worse.
>
> I'll note that even for triage, our eventual system evolved rapidly and
> putting an administrator in the middle to add and drop keywords and
> indicies would have just slowed stuff down. Permissionless to me is a
> requirement.
>
>

> On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 2:43 PM, Kartikaya Gupta <kgu...@mozilla.com>

> wrote:
>
>> What happens after June 24? Is the whiteboard field going to be removed?
>>

[Jason Duell]

Emma,

> it's not a indexed field or a real tag system, making it hard to parse,
search, and update.

Could we dig into details a little more here? I assume we could add a
database index for the whiteboard field if performance is an issue.
Do we give keywords an enum value or something (so bugzilla can
index/search them faster)? I'm not clear on what a "real tag system" means
concretely here.

thanks!

Jason

--

Jason

[Emma Humphries]

The whiteboard field a text blob with no rules, only conventions on
separators (which are not used consistently.) If you misspell a tag,
there's no prompt to correct (unless the browser or os spell checker
recognizes it) and you can get inconsistencies that way.

As for "real tagging system" look, for instance, at Wordpress' tagging
system or Live Journal's before that.

-- Emma

[Robert O'Callahan]

On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 9:31 PM, Gijs Kruitbosch <gijskru...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I'm confused. How are keywords not permissionless?


He meant that adding a new keyword requires permission.

Rob
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[Gijs Kruitbosch]

I'm confused. How are keywords not permissionless? I frequently see new
bugs filed with the first keyword from the sorted list
("ateam-something-or-other") by people who seem to be intent on "just
filing a bug in bugzilla", that is otherwise contentless. I must assume
that these people have no bugzilla permission bits set other than those
granted new accounts.

~ Gijs

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