Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Those old JIRA BUG items that the Lindens left as unreadable… Well, the one that filed the report can mark it readable. So, if you have a bug that has not been closed and want help with it, or feel it should be open to the public for some reason, change it. This change is … Read more
There was interesting discussion about how existing JIRA items will be handled. They may not be part of the new open JIRA. The open setting may only affect newly filed JIRA items.
I am pretty sure no one but the guys setting up the new permissions know. But, there are some possible privacy issues being considered.
What if, as Simon pointed out, somebody thinking they are private filed a my embarrassing part doesn’t work right type bug report? Now we open all those JIRA’s up? Oops!
Oz Linden in last Friday’s TPV Dev group meeting was saying they are determined that the JIRA will NOT go back to the way it was pre-2012-Change. There will be strict limits on user-to-user comments.
When specifically asked how the Lab would be enforcing those limits he repeated what we already know from the official announcement.
Oz has pointed out they will be managing the JIRA by the rule set, meaning the JIRA permissions system. There will not be issue-by-issue moderation. I take this to mean they are not wanting to devote engineer’s/programmer’s time to JIRA moderation. But, I suspect the Lindens will take faster action against individuals that abuse the system this time around. But, no Linden is saying that. We will have to wait to see what they do.
We have a major change in the SL JIRA System. Today at 9:55 AM a new post by Linden Lab appeared. Changes to Our JIRA Implementation. I think this is good news.
All users will be able to see all BUG issues, all the time. YAY!!
More controversial is the change: You’ll also be able to comment. Before an issue is triaged, everyone can comment to help isolate and describe the issue more clearly. Do remember, there are some basic guidelines for participation that need to be followed.
Those guide lines have not changed since June 2011, which was before the previous JIRA Change that closed the JIRA. So, this is going to put an enforcement burden on the Lindens using the JIRA.
I think another measure will reduce the problems we had before: Once an issue is Accepted and imported by Linden Lab’s QA team, the original reporter will still be able to comment, as will Lindens and a small team of community triagers – a group that includes some third party Viewer developers and others selected by Linden Lab for having demonstrated skills in this area.
In early September 2012 a JIRA update was rolled out. It wasn’t just a software update. How the Lindens used the JIRA was changing and most of that change was in how Second Life™ users used the JIRA. Basically user freedom in the JIRA was severely curtailed. Most SL users can only read JIRA items in the BUG project that they create. Now that may change.
Innula Zenovka got a comment from Ebbe Altberg about the JIRA. It is being widely quoted in numerous blogs.
Funny, both engineering and product heads here also didn’t like that jira was closed and want to open it up again. Proposal for how is in the works! I hope we can figure out how to do that in a way that works/scales soon.
This comment suggests that Mr. Altberg is open to the idea of opening the JIRA up. Ciaran has an article that covers problems and benefits of having an open JIRA. See: Ebbe Holds The Jira Door Ajar. I think I will be a bit more succinct then he was.
Back in September how the JIRA works changed. Now we can’t really know what’s going on with bugs and other problems in Second Life™ because most of us cannot read the JIRA. We cannot browse or search the JIRA to see if a problem we are encountering has been reported. So, we just report our problem.
Nor do we know if a problem is fixed. Unless the problem is something we experience almost daily and one Tuesday or Wednesday it suddenly starts working. For users the JIRA Change is a pain.
Various parts of the JIRA work different ways. Some projects are open and anyone can read and comment on the items filed in those projects. Others are closed, like BUG, and people can only read and comment on the items they file and only until they are triaged. Only a few can read most of the JIRA projects. You can read my initial announcement here: Oh CRAP! JIRA Change (Sept 7, 2012).