On 10/24/2012 02:15 PM, Donald Whytock wrote:
Apache Camel uses an "Estimated Complexity" custom field in the Apache
Issues Tracker. Current values in it are "Any", "Unknown", "Novice",
"Moderate", "Advanced", "Guru" and "Needs James Gosling".
LOL! :D
Had to look him up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling
Don
On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 4:45 PM, Louis Suárez-Potts <lui...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 12-10-24, at 16:28 , "Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamil...@acm.org> wrote:
@Regina,
Yes, Wizard is a reference to the level of mastery that a solver must
possess, and is one of those "which one of these words does not belong"
solutions.
There is a well-known *logarithmic* difficulty scale that has been used
over 40 years for problem difficulty. It might be worth adapting:
(after unknown),
00 easy - immediately solvable by someone willing to do it
10 simple - takes minutes
20 medium, average - quarter hour
30 moderate, an evening
40 difficult, challenging, non-trivial (term project, GSoC...)
50 unsolved, deep, requires a breakthrough, research
(PhD dissertation)
60 intractable (that I just made up - probably not something that
is technically feasible regardless of skill, Nobel Prize,
P = NP, etc.)
I suspect this scale has too much at the low end and perhaps not
enough steps at the high end. Perhaps there are two factors - skills and
work factor - how long for someone of the necessary skills? Or else
work factor is suggestive of the level of skill?
easy - minutes (fixing a typo on a web page)
simple - hour(s)
moderate - days
difficult, challenging - weeks
hard, demanding - months
stubborn - years (aka, intractable)
All of these assume fluency with basic tools and facility with the subject
matter of the issue.
For example, fixing change-tracking is at least hard.
- Dennis
One aspect that has been used and not used enough is to consider this in light
of how a student or neophyte might approach the task and whether it demands the
added help a mentor can offer.
Louis
-----Original Message-----
From: Regina Henschel [mailto:rb.hensc...@t-online.de]
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 13:04
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] "difficulty" field for Bugzilla
Hi Rob,
Rob Weir schrieb:
As you have probably noticed, I'm engaged in a variety of initiatives
to grow the community, bring in more volunteers, etc. One additional
piece that I think would be useful is to add a new field to Bugzilla
to indicate the difficulty level of the bug. Of course, this will
often not be known. But in some cases, we do know, and where we do
know we can indicate this.
What this allows us to do is then have search filters that return only
open easy bugs. These are ideal for new developer volunteers on the
project who are looking for items that match their lesser familiarity
with the code. It also allows a developer to step up to more
challenging bugs over time.
A similar approach, which they called "easy hacks", was successfully
used by LibreOffice.
If there are no objections, I'll add a new field to Bugzilla called
"cf_difficulty_level", and which a drop down UI with the following
choices:
UNKNOWN (default)
TRIVIAL
EASY
MODERATE
HARD
WIZARD
WIZARD is used in AOO UI in the meaning of 'assistant' or step by step
workflow. Therefore it might be not understood here. I need to look up
other meanings in a dictionary. I would drop it. HARD as highest step is
sufficient.
TRIVIAL sounds devaluating to me. Perhaps BEGINNER or STARTER is more
neutral? Being able to start is not only a question, whether the task is
easy or not from an objective point of view. Beyond that a mentor is
needed. Perhaps a category MENTORED instead of TRIVIAL is useful. A
senior developer would set it (and put himself in CC) if he is willing
to guide a newcomer.
(I'm certainly open to variations on the names)
I'd then rely on other developers to help "seed" the database with
some TRIVIAL and EASY bugs, so new volunteers will have something to
work with as they familiarize themselves with the project.
I'll wait 72 hours, etc.
In general I thing it is a good idea. Using Bugzilla has the advantage,
that it is not necessary to hold a Wiki page in sync with Bugzilla.
Kind regards
Regina
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MzK
"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never
dealt with a cat."
-- Robert Heinlein
