On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 10:54, Sumana Harihareswara
<suma...@wikimedia.org>wrote:

> On 02/20/2012 07:00 AM, wikimediaindia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.orgwrote:
> > Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:23:08 +0530
> > From: Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik....@gmail.com>
> > If you are asking only about technical issues, many communities do log
> bugs
> > from time to time. But when they remain open beyond certain period and
> the
> > person who logged becomes inactive, they go into black hole and there is
> no
> > one to follow up(even if its fixed, they remain open).
>

There is nothing to be distressed here.


> Srikanth, this is distressing to hear!  If you could point to some
> specific Bugzilla reports that have gone into the "black hole",
> including ones that no longer reflect reality, I could help ask the
> localisation team to follow up and at least put some updated information
> in the issues at bugzilla.wikimedia.org .
>

They are called "black hole" for the reason anyone(apart from the filer /
folks who conversed) might not be able to easily spot them. In most cases
the bugs lack update from the filers / language communities. But again if
the filer is from one generation and has retired, who does the follow up?
Ideally language support teams must do it. But all of us know Indic
communities have very few people to look into these and the common pattern
I have found across few communities I have interacted is that spending time
on bugzilla / improving technology/language support is not going to change
things big way, so I might as well be contented (Ex:- "Why Narayam when js
works fine") with whats there and do my editing. But at some point,
communities need to focus on these, as and when the communities grow, they
will also get contributors who are interested in supporting the language
technically.

> But the larger
> > issues are common and pretty much known to i18n team. (like say PDF
> > rendering). I tried cleaning up Tamil related bugs recently which were
> > documented here[1] since 2006, also created a tracking bug[2].
> >
> > But then as someone else said, "People are just waiting for one more
> > tracking bug to fix those. !" //So tracking bugs don't help beyond a
> point !
>
> This is also distressing to hear!  I'm not quite sure what was implied
> there -- did the speaker mean that the localisation team won't address
> certain problems until there are more tracking bugs to help track
> issues, or something else?
>

The quote was from one of the bugs I remember seeing on bugzilla, said by
someone on a totally different bug nothing related to localization. The
point I implied quoting it was "process for the sake of it doesn't help
much beyond a point". Adding tracking bugs does not impact the age of the
bug. The bugs remain open either because they are hard to solve / lack of
bandwidth / lack of input / variety of other reasons, not because no one is
tracking them. Adding a tracking bug wont magically fix the bug / help in
the getting it to closure. But tracking bug serves useful especially for
anyone new to see what are problem areas, how can I help fix / test / not
report duplicate bugs etc.



> > Most, if not all Indic issues would be tagged with i18n keyword on
> bugzilla.
> >
> Yes, adding the i18n keyword to an issue in Bugzilla will help bring it
> to the attention of the localisation team.
>

Another point, Not all Indic wikipedia related issues are i18n issues,
though there might be heavy overlap. There are site requests like changing
logo,namespace, installing extensions <<whatever>>. The point to note is,
when someone does these things in any Indic community(which already have
tiny community), please keep the community widely posted / document these
somewhere.Not just issues, but solutions/workarounds, gadgets used, things
like abuse filter rules(if any) and its rationale behind etc. This will
help someone else in your community(who may come years later) to follow up
even if you retire / had forgotten. Fortunately Tamil Wiki community did
that from the beginning(at least the major ones,if not everything) in the
form of a page[1] and I was able to go through,know the past issues,update
it after almost 2 years! I felt a tracking bug might be easier to track on
issues than a page, so I just created one.


> Thanks for mentioning this problem, Srikanth.


This problem is not restricted to bugzilla. This may even happen in say in
translation or anything, where only a subset (ideally 1-2 in a community of
10) involve in the activities and do not document / pass over the knowledge
properly.Smaller Wikipedias must not rely on select individual on anything
so much that they become extinct/dormant after their wiki-time
(Insert story of Bishnupriya Manipuri)  I hope Shiju is reading and might
be able to relate to it / research on solutions :)


[1] http://tawp.in/r/3hl

-- 
Regards
Srikanth.L
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