Re: [fossil-users] Fossil's (lack of) use of the Ticket system

[Shal Farley]

On 2018-08-04 4:48 AM, Gilles wrote:
It might, since forum softwares (should) provide "sticky posts" that 
are displayed at the top.


The one trick I've seen that seems most effective is to integrate the 
search function with the New Topic function such that the user is 
presented with a dynamic drop-down of suggested posts while typing their 
subject line.


People accustomed to that behavior in Google search may find it natural 
to select an existing subject text to see what's there.


Shal Farley 
Cheshire Engineering Corporation
+1 626 303 1602
http://www.CheshireEng.com


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Re: [fossil-users] Fossil's (lack of) use of the Ticket system

[Gilles]

On 04/08/2018 13:29, Stephan Beal wrote:
And maybe one day, move the mailing list to a web-based forum entirely 
so that people can post questions directly.


That's exactly what Richard is currently implementing. That alone 
won't stop the "how do i" posts - it's a Cosmic Rule that many people 
won't bother searching a forum (beyond a casual Google effort) before 
posting their own (oft-repeated) query. :/.


It might, since forum softwares (should) provide "sticky posts" that are 
displayed at the top.


Combined with a good search feature, it should reduce the recurrent "How 
do I?" posts.
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Re: [fossil-users] Fossil's (lack of) use of the Ticket system

[Warren Young]

On Aug 3, 2018, at 12:18 PM, Richard Hipp  wrote:
> 
> On 8/3/18, Dan Barbarito  wrote:
>> Hi all, I am trying to understand why Fossil itself does not use the
>> built-in ticketing functionality. I understand that trolls + spammers may be
>> a problem, but can't ticket changes simply be approved/denied?
> 
> I tried that.  What I found was that I was spending an inordinate
> amount of time pressing the "Reject" button on new ticket moderation
> because almost all tickets were of the form "How do I do …"

There’s nothing inherently wrong with answering tech support questions via a 
ticket tracker as opposed to a mailing list or a web forum.  A great many 
people are in fact trained to do this by their local IT departments, who 
require that every problem be reported via the local ticket tracker.

In my own public Fossil projects, I’ve found that people are preferring to post 
tickets anonymously rather than subscribe to my mailing lists and post there.  
It seems to me that we should clear obstacles from this path rather than put up 
barriers along it.


The actual problems are:


Problem 1: Web search crawlers apparently do not index Fossil tickets very 
well: I just tried a few searches for closed tickets in one of my public repos 
which should turn up just that one ticket, and couldn’t find them.

The consequence is that answering support questions via the ticket tracker is 
effectively private 1:1 support, not the distributed one-to-many form that 
allows FOSS projects to function well despite scant tech support resources.

Solution: Ensure that the “All Tickets” report is always discoverable by a web 
spider, even if /ticket is somehow unlinked from the navbar.  Ensure that the 
report’s output is easily indexed.  It looks like Fossil does not generate 
robots.txt, so that shouldn’t be a reason for this.


Problem 2: Fossil currently only announces new tickets via /timeline[.rss], so 
that the only ones likely to answer questions are those paying attention to the 
repo’s timeline, which means the burden mainly falls on those doing the 
development.  In a healthy FOSS project, much of this burden is taken up by the 
community instead, relieving core developers of dealing with it.

Solution: Fossil.next should allow a logged-in user to subscribe to certain 
timeline events, including new tickets, but not limited to it.  Some will also 
want to get an email on every checkin, for example.


Problem 3: “Tickets” in the current skin navbars is vague, so people will 
frequently misinterpret its nature and proper use.  Also problematic would be 
terms like “Issues” or “Support.”

Alternate Solution 1: Split it into “Bugs” and “Wish List” by pointing to 
appropriate default ticket table reports.  The exact terms are not important.  
What is important is that the terminology carry intent: if you are not filing a 
bug report or expressing a wish (i.e. feature request), you should be posting 
elsewhere.  

If “Forums” precede these two links on the navbar, more people will tend to 
post there first unless they specifically know they have a bug to report or a 
wish to express.


Alternate solution 2: Fossil.next should create several default sub-forums, 
including Bug Reports, Feature Requests, and Support Requests.  The “Tickets” 
navbar link should be hidden from normal users.  Users with suitably high 
capability should be able to promote a forum post to a ticket tracker entry.

> I have a really long queue right now.  I need to
> spend several days (probably) working on SQLite.  I'll get back to
> this Fossil enhancement as I am able.  Thank you for your feedback -
> it is important.  I will deal with it as soon as I can.

The other web forum technologies have a long history, with a lot of development 
behind them.  Expectations will be high, so I would expect the wish list length 
to mainly increase for quite some time yet.

I think what you have already is close to a minimum viable product.  I’m not 
sure it’s yet ready to take over for the SQLite and Fossil project mailing 
lists, but for small projects like mine, it’s probably nearly good enough to 
start using soon.
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Re: [fossil-users] Fossil's (lack of) use of the Ticket system

[Stephan Beal]

On Sat, Aug 4, 2018 at 12:38 PM Gilles  wrote:

> A lot of "How do I…?" questions can be answered by searching the archives
> of the mailing list :
>
> https://www.mail-archive.com/fossil-users@lists.fossil-scm.org/
>

People don't do that, though. In every support forum in the universe, some
appreciable percentage of posts are asking the same thing which the fellow
3 posts down from them is asking. (The BoardGameGeek forums are _prime_
examples of this.)

Since it's apparently not mentionned currently — I had to google "fossil
> scm mailing list" to find it —, I suggest updating the Docs section of
> www.fossil-scm.org page to add a link.
>

Richard is in the process of replacing the mailing list, so it's unlikely
to get a link on the home page.


> And maybe one day, move the mailing list to a web-based forum entirely so
> that people can post questions directly.
>

That's exactly what Richard is currently implementing. That alone won't
stop the "how do i" posts - it's a Cosmic Rule that many people won't
bother searching a forum (beyond a casual Google effort) before posting
their own (oft-repeated) query. :/.

-- 
- stephan beal
http://wanderinghorse.net/home/stephan/
"Freedom is sloppy. But since tyranny's the only guaranteed byproduct of
those who insist on a perfect world, freedom will have to do." -- Bigby Wolf
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Re: [fossil-users] Fossil's (lack of) use of the Ticket system

[Gilles]

A lot of "How do I…?" questions can be answered by searching the 
archives of the mailing list :


https://www.mail-archive.com/fossil-users@lists.fossil-scm.org/

Since it's apparently not mentionned currently — I had to google "fossil 
scm mailing list" to find it —, I suggest updating the Docs section of 
www.fossil-scm.org page to add a link.


And maybe one day, move the mailing list to a web-based forum entirely 
so that people can post questions directly.


On 03/08/2018 20:26, Dan Barbarito wrote:
Take your time drh, this is by no means urgent. I really appreciate 
the clarification.



 On Fri, 03 Aug 2018 14:18:43 -0400 *Richard Hipp 
* wrote 


On 8/3/18, Dan Barbarito mailto:d...@barbarito.me>> wrote:
> Hi all, I am trying to understand why Fossil itself does not use the
> built-in ticketing functionality. I understand that trolls +
spammers may be
> a problem, but can't ticket changes simply be approved/denied?

I tried that. What I found was that I was spending an inordinate
amount of time pressing the "Reject" button on new ticket moderation
because almost all tickets were of the form "How do I do ..."

Maybe the forum will turn out the same way. I won't know until we try
it. Maybe with a forum in place, we won't get so many "How do I
do..." tickets and we can turn tickets back on.

I have your request. I have a really long queue right now. I need to
spend several days (probably) working on SQLite. I'll get back to
this Fossil enhancement as I am able. Thank you for your feedback -
it is important. I will deal with it as soon as I can.
-- 
D. Richard Hipp

d...@sqlite.org 



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Re: [fossil-users] Fossil's (lack of) use of the Ticket system

[Dan Barbarito]

Take your time drh, this is by no means urgent. I really appreciate the 
clarification.  On Fri, 03 Aug 2018 14:18:43 -0400 Richard Hipp 
 wrote  On 8/3/18, Dan Barbarito  
wrote: > Hi all, I am trying to understand why Fossil itself does not use the > 
built-in ticketing functionality. I understand that trolls + spammers may be > 
a problem, but can't ticket changes simply be approved/denied? I tried that. 
What I found was that I was spending an inordinate amount of time pressing the 
"Reject" button on new ticket moderation because almost all tickets were of the 
form "How do I do ..." Maybe the forum will turn out the same way. I won't know 
until we try it. Maybe with a forum in place, we won't get so many "How do I 
do..." tickets and we can turn tickets back on. I have your request. I have a 
really long queue right now. I need to spend several days (probably) working on 
SQLite. I'll get back to this Fossil enhancement as I am able. Thank you for 
your feedback - it is important. I will deal with it as soon as I can. -- D. 
Richard Hipp d...@sqlite.org ___ 
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Re: [fossil-users] Fossil's (lack of) use of the Ticket system

[Richard Hipp]

On 8/3/18, Stephan Beal  wrote:
>
> i see that Richard just answered, so i'll stop there and see what he says

I like Stephan's answer better than my own :-)

-- 
D. Richard Hipp
d...@sqlite.org
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Re: [fossil-users] Fossil's (lack of) use of the Ticket system

[Stephan Beal]

On Fri, Aug 3, 2018 at 8:11 PM Dan Barbarito  wrote:

> I am trying to understand why Fossil itself does not use the built-in
> ticketing functionality. I understand that trolls + spammers may be a
> problem, but can't ticket changes simply be approved/denied? Using the
> ticketing system would give more people the opportunity to understand what
> bugs are being worked on, what features are being added, etc. Having a
> single place to document bugs and feature requests is the best way to see
> the status of a project at a glance. Yes, we have this mailing list and
> soon we will have forums, but I don't think bug reports should reside in
> these places.
>

Fossil used to use its own ticketing system more, but experience showed
that it was simply less hassle to use the mailing list. That certainly
isn't true for all projects. In the majority of cases, reported bugs are
literally not bugs - they're misunderstandings of how to use fossil. A
large portion of the "real bugs" reported often ended up resolved within
hours of someone reporting them on the mailing list, making the
administration via a ticket system more overhead than it was worth. Yes,
there's always that minority of bugs for which tracking them in the ticket
system makes sense, but it simply fell out of fashion to do so.

i see that Richard just answered, so i'll stop there and see what he says
on the topic. If there's any conflict of opinions, he wins, of course ;).

-- 
- stephan beal
http://wanderinghorse.net/home/stephan/
"Freedom is sloppy. But since tyranny's the only guaranteed byproduct of
those who insist on a perfect world, freedom will have to do." -- Bigby Wolf
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Re: [fossil-users] Fossil's (lack of) use of the Ticket system

[Richard Hipp]

On 8/3/18, Dan Barbarito  wrote:
> Hi all, I am trying to understand why Fossil itself does not use the
> built-in ticketing functionality. I understand that trolls + spammers may be
> a problem, but can't ticket changes simply be approved/denied?

I tried that.  What I found was that I was spending an inordinate
amount of time pressing the "Reject" button on new ticket moderation
because almost all tickets were of the form "How do I do ..."

Maybe the forum will turn out the same way.  I won't know until we try
it.  Maybe with a forum in place, we won't get so many "How do I
do..." tickets and we can turn tickets back on.

I have your request.  I have a really long queue right now.  I need to
spend several days (probably) working on SQLite.  I'll get back to
this Fossil enhancement as I am able.  Thank you for your feedback -
it is important.  I will deal with it as soon as I can.
-- 
D. Richard Hipp
d...@sqlite.org
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[fossil-users] Fossil's (lack of) use of the Ticket system

[Dan Barbarito]

Hi all, I am trying to understand why Fossil itself does not use the built-in 
ticketing functionality. I understand that trolls + spammers may be a problem, 
but can't ticket changes simply be approved/denied? Using the ticketing system 
would give more people the opportunity to understand what bugs are being worked 
on, what features are being added, etc. Having a single place to document bugs 
and feature requests is the best way to see the status of a project at a 
glance. Yes, we have this mailing list and soon we will have forums, but I 
don't think bug reports should reside in these places. Thanks, Dan___
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