Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Bruce Momjian wrote: Alvaro Herrera wrote: Bruce Momjian wrote: Alvaro Herrera wrote: In Debian's bug tracking system, when the bug is created (which is done by sending an email to a certain address) it gets a number, and the email is distributed to certain lists. People can then reply to that mail, and send messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and it gets tracked in the bug, and you can see all those messages in the bug report. I ass-ume that BZ 3.0 does something similar. But often a TODO item has multiple threads containing details (often months apart), and it isn't obvious at the time the thread is started that this will happen. Note the number of TODO items that now have multiple URLs. How is that handled? Just add the bug address to CC and reply to it, just like when you reply to say added to TODO, only that you don't need to manually go and modify the TODO file by hand. The bug tracking system puts that mail into the bug report. Subsequent followups keep the bug address in CC and thus the whole discussion is saved in the bug report. Right, but you are adding the bug addresss at the end of the email thread. How do you point to the email you want to reference? I am not sure. We will have to investigate more the capabilities of the bug tracking system we intend to use. In the worst case one could add the URL for the archived message copy; second worst would be bouncing (hopefully not forward) the interesting messages to the bug address. If we had our own method for fetching a message by Message-Id, we could add Message-Ids to bugs reports. In the meantime we could use Gmane's. -- Alvaro Herrerahttp://www.CommandPrompt.com/ The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Alvaro Herrera wrote: Bruce Momjian wrote: Alvaro Herrera wrote: Bruce Momjian wrote: Alvaro Herrera wrote: In Debian's bug tracking system, when the bug is created (which is done by sending an email to a certain address) it gets a number, and the email is distributed to certain lists. People can then reply to that mail, and send messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and it gets tracked in the bug, and you can see all those messages in the bug report. I ass-ume that BZ 3.0 does something similar. But often a TODO item has multiple threads containing details (often months apart), and it isn't obvious at the time the thread is started that this will happen. Note the number of TODO items that now have multiple URLs. How is that handled? Just add the bug address to CC and reply to it, just like when you reply to say added to TODO, only that you don't need to manually go and modify the TODO file by hand. The bug tracking system puts that mail into the bug report. Subsequent followups keep the bug address in CC and thus the whole discussion is saved in the bug report. Right, but you are adding the bug addresss at the end of the email thread. How do you point to the email you want to reference? I am not sure. We will have to investigate more the capabilities of the bug tracking system we intend to use. In the worst case one could add the URL for the archived message copy; second worst would be bouncing (hopefully not forward) the interesting messages to the bug address. Sounds like what I do with the TODO list now. -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Bruce Momjian wrote: Alvaro Herrera wrote: Bruce Momjian wrote: Alvaro Herrera wrote: Bruce Momjian wrote: Alvaro Herrera wrote: In Debian's bug tracking system, when the bug is created (which is done by sending an email to a certain address) it gets a number, and the email is distributed to certain lists. People can then reply to that mail, and send messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and it gets tracked in the bug, and you can see all those messages in the bug report. I ass-ume that BZ 3.0 does something similar. But often a TODO item has multiple threads containing details (often months apart), and it isn't obvious at the time the thread is started that this will happen. Note the number of TODO items that now have multiple URLs. How is that handled? Just add the bug address to CC and reply to it, just like when you reply to say added to TODO, only that you don't need to manually go and modify the TODO file by hand. The bug tracking system puts that mail into the bug report. Subsequent followups keep the bug address in CC and thus the whole discussion is saved in the bug report. Right, but you are adding the bug addresss at the end of the email thread. How do you point to the email you want to reference? I am not sure. We will have to investigate more the capabilities of the bug tracking system we intend to use. In the worst case one could add the URL for the archived message copy; second worst would be bouncing (hopefully not forward) the interesting messages to the bug address. Sounds like what I do with the TODO list now. Except that this is the *worst case* with the bug tracker, whereas for the TODO list it is not only the worst case, it is also the best case and the only case at all. -- Alvaro Herrerahttp://www.CommandPrompt.com/ The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Alvaro Herrera wrote: I am not sure. We will have to investigate more the capabilities of the bug tracking system we intend to use. In the worst case one could add the URL for the archived message copy; second worst would be bouncing (hopefully not forward) the interesting messages to the bug address. Sounds like what I do with the TODO list now. Except that this is the *worst case* with the bug tracker, whereas for the TODO list it is not only the worst case, it is also the best case and the only case at all. And it requires no additional work to ignore threads. -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 10:46:50AM -0400, Alvaro Herrera wrote: I am not sure. We will have to investigate more the capabilities of the bug tracking system we intend to use. In the worst case one could add the URL for the archived message copy; second worst would be bouncing (hopefully not forward) the interesting messages to the bug address. Sounds like what I do with the TODO list now. Except that this is the *worst case* with the bug tracker, whereas for the TODO list it is not only the worst case, it is also the best case and the only case at all. And any number of people can manage it (just like the wiki). -- Jim Nasby [EMAIL PROTECTED] EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell) ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Alvaro Herrera wrote: This is even better than our archives due to the problem that the archives don't have links to messages crossing month boundaries. Have you noticed that if you go to the archives, some discussions appear truncated at a point, but you can go to the archive for the next month and it continues there? I find that artifact somewhat annoying. The bug report would continue receiving the CC'ed mails, so it would record them all in a single place. Not crossing month boundaries is super-annoying. Indeed, but that should be fixed. I can't imagine that one presumably-fixable deficiency is grounds for changing our entire discussion infrastructure. Or do you think we will find something else that has no deficiencies of its own? regards, tom lane ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Alvaro Herrera wrote: This is even better than our archives due to the problem that the archives don't have links to messages crossing month boundaries. Have you noticed that if you go to the archives, some discussions appear truncated at a point, but you can go to the archive for the next month and it continues there? I find that artifact somewhat annoying. The bug report would continue receiving the CC'ed mails, so it would record them all in a single place. Not crossing month boundaries is super-annoying. Indeed, but that should be fixed. I can't imagine that one presumably-fixable deficiency is grounds for changing our entire discussion infrastructure. Or do you think we will find something else that has no deficiencies of its own? regards, tom lane ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Tom Lane wrote: Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Alvaro Herrera wrote: This is even better than our archives due to the problem that the archives don't have links to messages crossing month boundaries. Have you noticed that if you go to the archives, some discussions appear truncated at a point, but you can go to the archive for the next month and it continues there? I find that artifact somewhat annoying. The bug report would continue receiving the CC'ed mails, so it would record them all in a single place. Not crossing month boundaries is super-annoying. Indeed, but that should be fixed. I can't imagine that one presumably-fixable deficiency is grounds for changing our entire discussion infrastructure. Or do you think we will find something else that has no deficiencies of its own? Very much agreed, however, changing how it's done might open up ways to change other things for the better - things we can't do now. But getting rid of that annoying thing alone does not change anything else, or require changing of anything else. //Magnus ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
To follow up on this, if you look at how TODO items are created, they often come out of discussion threads, and sometimes more than one idea comes from a discussion thread. If we moved to a trackers system, how would we handle that? Also, if I want to discuss renaming something or cleaning up some code, do we create a tracker item for that or do we have a developer email list to discuss such issues? And if we have a developer email list, how do we make sure everything that happens there gets into the tracker if needed? Basically, right now, the steam ignores non-TODO items that are discussed, while with a trackers, I am afraid you have to explicitly mark every discussion thread as uninteresting/closed, and I am worried about the manpower and participant overhead of doing that. --- bruce wrote: Let me give you my approach to tracking. It might help set the stage for moving forward. My goal has always been to foster discussion and pull as many TODO items and patches from the discussion as possible (and others do that as well by saying Please add to TODO or applying patches). I see the process much more as pulling things from a stream of data, rather than tracking every event. We already record everything in the archive. The current discussion is how and who should summarize/track that information. Right now, the TODO list is a good summary, and URLs help to give detail. I am not sure seeing all treads of a TODO item would help. In a way, the summarization is more valuable than the details for most people. Again, the question is what is the cost of summarizing the stream at a more detailed level vs. its value. Because I see us operating on a stream, it is unclear when to pull an item from the stream and track it off-stream, such as in a bug tracker database. I am also concerned that tracking itself not inhibit the volume of the stream, particularly if discussion participants have to do something more difficult than what they do now. The idea of the patch number in the subject line works with that streaming model because it merely marks streams so they can be grouped. The defining event that marks the stream is a post to the patches list. We already number posts to the bugs list, so in a way we could improve tracking there and somehow link it to TODO items and patch submissions, but because many TODO items are not the result of bug reports but come out of general discussions, I am not sure tracking would work as well there. And what about features? Do you start assigning numbers there, and what is your trigger event? In my opinion, as you start trying to place more structure on the stream, the stream itself starts to degrade in its dynamism and ease of use. To me, that is the fundamental issue, and risk. I think a lot of this relates to the volume of work we do per participant. I think we are probably near the top for open source projects, and while more detailed tracking might help, it also might hurt. I am hoping the stream analogy might help people understand why we do what we do, why we are so successful, and how we can improve what we currently have. -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Bruce Momjian wrote: To follow up on this, if you look at how TODO items are created, they often come out of discussion threads, and sometimes more than one idea comes from a discussion thread. If we moved to a trackers system, how would we handle that? We have the discussion on list, if it warrants a todo, we create a todo. Also, if I want to discuss renaming something or cleaning up some code, do we create a tracker item for that or do we have a developer email list to discuss such issues? In the most conformist sense yes, but I can tell you that generally isn't how CMD does it. How we general do it, is to create a ticket basic on a topic, that ticket cc's a mailing list and discussion happens in reply to that cc. So the workflow doesn't actually change. Once everything is decided we may update the ticket with the final solution, and then when the work is done we close the ticket. However, we do it the way we do, because we don't have email integration. Supposedly (which a small group is currently reviewing) BZ 3.0 does have email integration so this may change a bit. And if we have a developer email list, how do we make sure everything that happens there gets into the tracker if needed? See above. Basically, right now, the steam ignores non-TODO items that are discussed, while with a trackers, I am afraid you have to explicitly mark every discussion thread as uninteresting/closed, and I am worried about the manpower and participant overhead of doing that. Oh good lord, yeah I wouldn't want to do that either. Email is obviously going to be the predominant medium of communication. I think what would end up happening, if we were able to tightly integrate with email and bz would that at some point all discussions die off, it would be up to the person that opened the discussion or an bz admin to close or change the status of the ticket. The nice thing is if someone comes back to the thread at any point (which happens all the time) the ticket should automatically re-open. Joshua D. Drake --- bruce wrote: Let me give you my approach to tracking. It might help set the stage for moving forward. My goal has always been to foster discussion and pull as many TODO items and patches from the discussion as possible (and others do that as well by saying Please add to TODO or applying patches). I see the process much more as pulling things from a stream of data, rather than tracking every event. We already record everything in the archive. The current discussion is how and who should summarize/track that information. Right now, the TODO list is a good summary, and URLs help to give detail. I am not sure seeing all treads of a TODO item would help. In a way, the summarization is more valuable than the details for most people. Again, the question is what is the cost of summarizing the stream at a more detailed level vs. its value. Because I see us operating on a stream, it is unclear when to pull an item from the stream and track it off-stream, such as in a bug tracker database. I am also concerned that tracking itself not inhibit the volume of the stream, particularly if discussion participants have to do something more difficult than what they do now. The idea of the patch number in the subject line works with that streaming model because it merely marks streams so they can be grouped. The defining event that marks the stream is a post to the patches list. We already number posts to the bugs list, so in a way we could improve tracking there and somehow link it to TODO items and patch submissions, but because many TODO items are not the result of bug reports but come out of general discussions, I am not sure tracking would work as well there. And what about features? Do you start assigning numbers there, and what is your trigger event? In my opinion, as you start trying to place more structure on the stream, the stream itself starts to degrade in its dynamism and ease of use. To me, that is the fundamental issue, and risk. I think a lot of this relates to the volume of work we do per participant. I think we are probably near the top for open source projects, and while more detailed tracking might help, it also might hurt. I am hoping the stream analogy might help people understand why we do what we do, why we are so successful, and how we can improve what we currently have. -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Joshua D. Drake wrote: Also, if I want to discuss renaming something or cleaning up some code, do we create a tracker item for that or do we have a developer email list to discuss such issues? In the most conformist sense yes, but I can tell you that generally isn't how CMD does it. How we general do it, is to create a ticket basic on a topic, that ticket cc's a mailing list and discussion happens in reply to that cc. So the workflow doesn't actually change. Once everything is decided we may update the ticket with the final solution, and then when the work is done we close the ticket. However, we do it the way we do, because we don't have email integration. Supposedly (which a small group is currently reviewing) BZ 3.0 does have email integration so this may change a bit. Well, with email integration (as I am envisioning -- I don't know what BZ actually implements) it is even better, because you just create a ticket, and that sends an email to the list. Other people can respond to that email, which gets saved into the bug without need for further action. In Debian's bug tracking system, when the bug is created (which is done by sending an email to a certain address) it gets a number, and the email is distributed to certain lists. People can then reply to that mail, and send messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and it gets tracked in the bug, and you can see all those messages in the bug report. I ass-ume that BZ 3.0 does something similar. -- Alvaro Herrerahttp://www.CommandPrompt.com/ PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Alvaro Herrera wrote: Joshua D. Drake wrote: Also, if I want to discuss renaming something or cleaning up some code, do we create a tracker item for that or do we have a developer email list to discuss such issues? In the most conformist sense yes, but I can tell you that generally isn't how CMD does it. How we general do it, is to create a ticket basic on a topic, that ticket cc's a mailing list and discussion happens in reply to that cc. So the workflow doesn't actually change. Once everything is decided we may update the ticket with the final solution, and then when the work is done we close the ticket. However, we do it the way we do, because we don't have email integration. Supposedly (which a small group is currently reviewing) BZ 3.0 does have email integration so this may change a bit. Well, with email integration (as I am envisioning -- I don't know what BZ actually implements) it is even better, because you just create a ticket, and that sends an email to the list. Other people can respond to that email, which gets saved into the bug without need for further action. In Debian's bug tracking system, when the bug is created (which is done by sending an email to a certain address) it gets a number, and the email is distributed to certain lists. People can then reply to that mail, and send messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and it gets tracked in the bug, and you can see all those messages in the bug report. I ass-ume that BZ 3.0 does something similar. But often a TODO item has multiple threads containing details (often months apart), and it isn't obvious at the time the thread is started that this will happen. Note the number of TODO items that now have multiple URLs. How is that handled? -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Bruce Momjian wrote: Alvaro Herrera wrote: In Debian's bug tracking system, when the bug is created (which is done by sending an email to a certain address) it gets a number, and the email is distributed to certain lists. People can then reply to that mail, and send messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and it gets tracked in the bug, and you can see all those messages in the bug report. I ass-ume that BZ 3.0 does something similar. But often a TODO item has multiple threads containing details (often months apart), and it isn't obvious at the time the thread is started that this will happen. Note the number of TODO items that now have multiple URLs. How is that handled? Just add the bug address to CC and reply to it, just like when you reply to say added to TODO, only that you don't need to manually go and modify the TODO file by hand. The bug tracking system puts that mail into the bug report. Subsequent followups keep the bug address in CC and thus the whole discussion is saved in the bug report. This is even better than our archives due to the problem that the archives don't have links to messages crossing month boundaries. Have you noticed that if you go to the archives, some discussions appear truncated at a point, but you can go to the archive for the next month and it continues there? I find that artifact somewhat annoying. The bug report would continue receiving the CC'ed mails, so it would record them all in a single place. -- Alvaro Herrerahttp://www.CommandPrompt.com/ The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Bruce Momjian wrote: In Debian's bug tracking system, when the bug is created (which is done by sending an email to a certain address) it gets a number, and the email is distributed to certain lists. People can then reply to that mail, and send messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and it gets tracked in the bug, and you can see all those messages in the bug report. I ass-ume that BZ 3.0 does something similar. But often a TODO item has multiple threads containing details (often months apart), and it isn't obvious at the time the thread is started that this will happen. Note the number of TODO items that now have multiple URLs. How is that handled? Well you can certainly merge tickets, but one of the ideas would be to help stop that :)... Hey what about foo... oh we discussed that *here*... Joshua D. Drake ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Alvaro Herrera wrote: Bruce Momjian wrote: Alvaro Herrera wrote: In Debian's bug tracking system, when the bug is created (which is done by sending an email to a certain address) it gets a number, and the email is distributed to certain lists. People can then reply to that mail, and send messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and it gets tracked in the bug, and you can see all those messages in the bug report. I ass-ume that BZ 3.0 does something similar. But often a TODO item has multiple threads containing details (often months apart), and it isn't obvious at the time the thread is started that this will happen. Note the number of TODO items that now have multiple URLs. How is that handled? Just add the bug address to CC and reply to it, just like when you reply to say added to TODO, only that you don't need to manually go and modify the TODO file by hand. The bug tracking system puts that mail into the bug report. Subsequent followups keep the bug address in CC and thus the whole discussion is saved in the bug report. Right, but you are adding the bug addresss at the end of the email thread. How do you point to the email you want to reference? This is even better than our archives due to the problem that the archives don't have links to messages crossing month boundaries. Have you noticed that if you go to the archives, some discussions appear truncated at a point, but you can go to the archive for the next month and it continues there? I find that artifact somewhat annoying. The bug report would continue receiving the CC'ed mails, so it would record them all in a single place. Not crossing month boundaries is super-annoying. -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Joshua D. Drake wrote: Bruce Momjian wrote: In Debian's bug tracking system, when the bug is created (which is done by sending an email to a certain address) it gets a number, and the email is distributed to certain lists. People can then reply to that mail, and send messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and it gets tracked in the bug, and you can see all those messages in the bug report. I ass-ume that BZ 3.0 does something similar. But often a TODO item has multiple threads containing details (often months apart), and it isn't obvious at the time the thread is started that this will happen. Note the number of TODO items that now have multiple URLs. How is that handled? Well you can certainly merge tickets, but one of the ideas would be to help stop that :)... Hey what about foo... oh we discussed that *here*... Our thought process is not linear --- often an item changes as our surrounding code changes too. The multiple URLs are not because no one knows about the previous discussion. -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 01:18:42PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote: In Debian's bug tracking system, when the bug is created (which is done by sending an email to a certain address) it gets a number, and the email is distributed to certain lists. People can then reply to that mail, and send messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and it gets tracked in the bug, and you can see all those messages in the bug report. I ass-ume that BZ 3.0 does something similar. But often a TODO item has multiple threads containing details (often months apart), and it isn't obvious at the time the thread is started that this will happen. Note the number of TODO items that now have multiple URLs. How is that handled? Worst-case, for those cases we add URLs to the tracker manually like you do now. The big advantage is that most of the time that's not needed. And in cases where it's not automatic we can grant any number of people permission to add that information to the tracker, because that permission wouldn't be tied to CVS commit privs. -- Jim Nasby [EMAIL PROTECTED] EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell) ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Jim Nasby wrote: On May 6, 2007, at 8:18 AM, Andrew Dunstan wrote: Oh, the answer to Bruce's question about when to create a feature item? You could well do it at the time when today you create a TODO item. However, we might even do better. For example, we might well add feature requests that are denied. That would help people to see if something has been proposed before. The problem with our current TODO process is that whether an item makes it onto the list is essentially determined by did the idea catch a committer's attention, and did that committer happen to think it was a good idea. That sets the bar pretty high for getting stuff on the list (which you need for a simple list like TODO), but it also means it's very subjective. (Of course 98% of the time that committer is Bruce, but I don't think that matters here...) Users often request items be added to the TODO list, and I usually comply. -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Jim Nasby wrote: On May 6, 2007, at 8:18 AM, Andrew Dunstan wrote: Oh, the answer to Bruce's question about when to create a feature item? You could well do it at the time when today you create a TODO item. However, we might even do better. For example, we might well add feature requests that are denied. That would help people to see if something has been proposed before. Uh, TODO has that: Features We Do _Not_ Want Do we need more items on that list? -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
To follow up on Andrew's idea of tracking things back to the TODO or bug number: We could have a universal developer number, something like PGD#23432 as a PostgreSQL Developer number. We could assign them for submissions to the bugs list, where we already assign a number. I could easily add them to TODO items that already don't have a number from the bugs list, and we could use the number for postings to the patches list that again don't already have a number. (The PGD numbers would have value ranges assigned for specific uses, like 0-10 are bugs, 11-20 are assigned as TODO items, +30 are patches, etc.) The idea is that if you are working on a TODO item you mention that number in the email subject discussing it, and for postings to the patches list. A web application could then read from the email stream and pull out information about any item. The only overhead is people mentioning the assigned number consistently. One problem is that our development isn't linear --- often TODO items are the result of several email threads, and TODO items are split and merged regularly, meaning that a PGD number could be partially complete or be merged with another number. When this happens, the number might cause confusion, and I don't see a way to fix that easily. --- Dave Page wrote: Bruce Momjian wrote: The idea of the patch number in the subject line works with that streaming model because it merely marks streams so they can be grouped. The defining event that marks the stream is a post to the patches list. We already number posts to the bugs list, so in a way we could improve tracking there and somehow link it to TODO items and patch submissions, but because many TODO items are not the result of bug reports but come out of general discussions, I am not sure tracking would work as well there. And what about features? Do you start assigning numbers there, and what is your trigger event? In my opinion, as you start trying to place more structure on the stream, the stream itself starts to degrade in its dynamism and ease of use. To me, that is the fundamental issue, and risk. Bruce, I cannot really add to that except to say that you neatly summarized what I've completely failed to in my last few emails to Andrew. I agree completely. Regards, Dave. -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Jim, I am sympathetic to the issues you and Andrew are describing (I understand Bruce's stream analogy, but I think Andrew is right that from the user's point of view, it's not usable). But I am not convinced that users voting on desired features will get us the users' desired features. The features we get are mostly the features that have attracted developers. The method by which that attraction happens is interesting, but I don't think it's democratic. Further, our community has always operated by consensus and public mailing list poll when applicable, and not by majority rules vote or anything similar. The only advantage I can see to allowing voting on TODOs would be to quickly answer the question does anyone t all care about this, but I personally am not convinced that offering Bugzilla-style voting would help that at all. On other projects, my experience is that people don't use the BZ voting, even projects which otherwise use BZ extensively. --Josh Berkus ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 07:36:55AM -0500, Jim Nasby wrote: Instead, if all feature requests are tracked then users can vote on what's most important to them. I am sympathetic to the issues you and Andrew are describing (I understand Bruce's stream analogy, but I think Andrew is right that from the user's point of view, it's not usable). But I am not convinced that users voting on desired features will get us the users' desired features. The features we get are mostly the features that have attracted developers. The method by which that attraction happens is interesting, but I don't think it's democratic. A -- Andrew Sullivan | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Information security isn't a technological problem. It's an economics problem. --Bruce Schneier ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Andrew Sullivan wrote: On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 07:36:55AM -0500, Jim Nasby wrote: Instead, if all feature requests are tracked then users can vote on what's most important to them. I am sympathetic to the issues you and Andrew are describing (I understand Bruce's stream analogy, but I think Andrew is right that from the user's point of view, it's not usable). But I am not convinced that users voting on desired features will get us the users' desired features. The features we get are mostly the features that have attracted developers. The method by which that attraction happens is interesting, but I don't think it's democratic. Getting votes might provide a useful point of information, not a way of making decisions, though. I certainly don't regard it as a must-have feature. cheers andrew ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
On May 8, 2007, at 9:50 AM, Andrew Sullivan wrote: On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 07:36:55AM -0500, Jim Nasby wrote: Instead, if all feature requests are tracked then users can vote on what's most important to them. I am sympathetic to the issues you and Andrew are describing (I understand Bruce's stream analogy, but I think Andrew is right that from the user's point of view, it's not usable). But I am not convinced that users voting on desired features will get us the users' desired features. The features we get are mostly the features that have attracted developers. The method by which that attraction happens is interesting, but I don't think it's democratic. It may... it may not. If a high-demand feature sits around long enough it could well attract someone capable of working on it, but who isn't a current contributor. Or it could attract a bounty. I'm also not sure if PostgreSQL is quite the same as other OSS projects. My impression is that we have quite a few developers who no longer do much if any database development (ie: they're not serious users); they continue to contribute because of other reasons. I suspect developers like that are not unlikely to scratch an itch that isn't their own. -- Jim Nasby[EMAIL PROTECTED] EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell) ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Jim Nasby wrote: On May 8, 2007, at 9:50 AM, Andrew Sullivan wrote: On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 07:36:55AM -0500, Jim Nasby wrote: Instead, if all feature requests are tracked then users can vote on what's most important to them. I am sympathetic to the issues you and Andrew are describing (I understand Bruce's stream analogy, but I think Andrew is right that from the user's point of view, it's not usable). But I am not convinced that users voting on desired features will get us the users' desired features. The features we get are mostly the features that have attracted developers. The method by which that attraction happens is interesting, but I don't think it's democratic. It may... it may not. If a high-demand feature sits around long enough it could well attract someone capable of working on it, but who isn't a current contributor. Or it could attract a bounty. Also keep in mind that many of the developers are working for companies that ensure that resources get allocated according to what users need and not only by what developers are motivated to work on. That being said, it seems obvious that so far PostgreSQL has been mainly driven by what developers feel like implementing. I think this is also what ensured the high level of standards compliance of PostgreSQL, since features were tailored for experienced DBA types, rather than end users that are less experienced in how to leverage these standards. regards, Lukas ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Hi, guess I missed hackers on my initial reply. So I am re-sending the reply I send to Joshua based on the reply I send to him in regards to a hackers@ posting. Read below. regards, Lukas Joshua D. Drake wrote: That being said, it seems obvious that so far PostgreSQL has been mainly driven by what developers feel like implementing. I think this is also what ensured the high level of standards compliance of PostgreSQL, since features were tailored for experienced DBA types, rather than end users that are less experienced in how to leverage these standards. PostgreSQL has *never* been developed with the DBA in mind. Keep in mind that most of the postgresql developers have *zero* real world experience. Nor do they run postgresql themselves in real world production environments. Well, certainly more with a DBA in mind than a middle tier developer? regards, Lukas PS: Did you mean to only reply to me? ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
On May 6, 2007, at 8:18 AM, Andrew Dunstan wrote: Oh, the answer to Bruce's question about when to create a feature item? You could well do it at the time when today you create a TODO item. However, we might even do better. For example, we might well add feature requests that are denied. That would help people to see if something has been proposed before. The problem with our current TODO process is that whether an item makes it onto the list is essentially determined by did the idea catch a committer's attention, and did that committer happen to think it was a good idea. That sets the bar pretty high for getting stuff on the list (which you need for a simple list like TODO), but it also means it's very subjective. (Of course 98% of the time that committer is Bruce, but I don't think that matters here...) The subjectivity is because we don't have an effective means to get information about how PostgreSQL is used in the field. Sometimes you can mine that information out of the archives, but that's a pretty tedious process (and therefor one that's unlikely to happen). But that's also not necessarily representative... many people will try and find an answer to something on their own and not post anything to the lists at all, even if the 'answer' they find isn't very optimal. Instead, if all feature requests are tracked then users can vote on what's most important to them. That provides immediate feedback to the community on how important something is to the users. http:// lnk.nu/bugzilla.mozilla.org/edc.cgi is an example of that for Firefox. -- Jim Nasby[EMAIL PROTECTED] EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell) ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Bruce Momjian wrote: The idea of the patch number in the subject line works with that streaming model because it merely marks streams so they can be grouped. The defining event that marks the stream is a post to the patches list. We already number posts to the bugs list, so in a way we could improve tracking there and somehow link it to TODO items and patch submissions, but because many TODO items are not the result of bug reports but come out of general discussions, I am not sure tracking would work as well there. And what about features? Do you start assigning numbers there, and what is your trigger event? In my opinion, as you start trying to place more structure on the stream, the stream itself starts to degrade in its dynamism and ease of use. To me, that is the fundamental issue, and risk. Bruce, I cannot really add to that except to say that you neatly summarized what I've completely failed to in my last few emails to Andrew. I agree completely. Regards, Dave. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
Re: [HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Dave Page wrote: Bruce Momjian wrote: The idea of the patch number in the subject line works with that streaming model because it merely marks streams so they can be grouped. The defining event that marks the stream is a post to the patches list. We already number posts to the bugs list, so in a way we could improve tracking there and somehow link it to TODO items and patch submissions, but because many TODO items are not the result of bug reports but come out of general discussions, I am not sure tracking would work as well there. And what about features? Do you start assigning numbers there, and what is your trigger event? In my opinion, as you start trying to place more structure on the stream, the stream itself starts to degrade in its dynamism and ease of use. To me, that is the fundamental issue, and risk. Bruce, I cannot really add to that except to say that you neatly summarized what I've completely failed to in my last few emails to Andrew. I agree completely. Frankly, this strikes me as painting lipstick on a pig. Try searching the mailing list archives to find information. It's hard. It sucks badly. So often you have to post a query on a mailing list, which you have to join unless you want your query to sit in limbo for days. If you think this is treating users nicely then you have a different idea from me of what that means. Yes, what I'm proposing means work, and no it can't be fully automated. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing. Case 1 (bug): Recently I had a problem with Gaim/Pidgin on my fc6 boxes. I went to the bug site, clicked a few buttons and found that our own Devrim Gunduz had reported the problem. Later, when I found out some more information, I went back and added it to the bug. When the RedHat/Fedora guys get around to fixing it they will know what the problem is and what the solution is. They will have all the info gathered in one spot. Case 2 (feature): Several years ago I wanted to find out what had happened about BZ support for Postgres. It was in their roadmap doc, so I went and looked at the tracking item. Nothing seemed to be happening, so I asked. Then I reviewed the patches (plural, note - another reason why tracking patches rather than action items is not necessarily good) that related to the item. I didn't like the direction they were going so I did some work and proposed an alternative. That got picked up by Ed Sobol and Max Kanat-Alexander (iirc) and the result is that today there is full support for Postgres in BZ mainline. If someone wants to review the history it is all there, with patches and comments all gathered neatly. Oh, the answer to Bruce's question about when to create a feature item? You could well do it at the time when today you create a TODO item. However, we might even do better. For example, we might well add feature requests that are denied. That would help people to see if something has been proposed before. I could go on but I'm actually trying to get some code written today :-) cheers andrew ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
[HACKERS] Managing the community information stream
Let me give you my approach to tracking. It might help set the stage for moving forward. My goal has always been to foster discussion and pull as many TODO items and patches from the discussion as possible (and others do that as well by saying Please add to TODO or applying patches). I see the process much more as pulling things from a stream of data, rather than tracking every event. We already record everything in the archive. The current discussion is how and who should summarize/track that information. Right now, the TODO list is a good summary, and URLs help to give detail. I am not sure seeing all treads of a TODO item would help. In a way, the summarization is more valuable than the details for most people. Again, the question is what is the cost of summarizing the stream at a more detailed level vs. its value. Because I see us operating on a stream, it is unclear when to pull an item from the stream and track it off-stream, such as in a bug tracker database. I am also concerned that tracking itself not inhibit the volume of the stream, particularly if discussion participants have to do something more difficult than what they do now. The idea of the patch number in the subject line works with that streaming model because it merely marks streams so they can be grouped. The defining event that marks the stream is a post to the patches list. We already number posts to the bugs list, so in a way we could improve tracking there and somehow link it to TODO items and patch submissions, but because many TODO items are not the result of bug reports but come out of general discussions, I am not sure tracking would work as well there. And what about features? Do you start assigning numbers there, and what is your trigger event? In my opinion, as you start trying to place more structure on the stream, the stream itself starts to degrade in its dynamism and ease of use. To me, that is the fundamental issue, and risk. I think a lot of this relates to the volume of work we do per participant. I think we are probably near the top for open source projects, and while more detailed tracking might help, it also might hurt. I am hoping the stream analogy might help people understand why we do what we do, why we are so successful, and how we can improve what we currently have. -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq
