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Better Open Source Communities Through Data

Posted by Unknown on from the keeping-dinosaurs-relevant dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Using exhaust data from Bugzilla, David Eaves describes how the Mozilla Metrics team is creating dashboards to improve the contributor experience and give open source community managers better situational awareness."

9 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. Bugzilla alternatives by Compaqt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While it's great that Bugzilla is provding this, I'm wondering if anyone can post their experience with Bugzilla alternatives.

    Bugzilla's great ... for developers.

    Is there anything that could be just to allow customers to directly enter bugs? Something Trac-like?

    --
    I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
    1. Re:Bugzilla alternatives by SheeEttin · · Score: 2

      What, customers can't file bugs in Bugzilla?

      Or do you just mean that it's more difficult/daunting for them to use Bugzilla? In that case, what you have there is a feature, not a bug. Make it too easy, you'll get a bug filed for every little thing (and they won't check for duplicates first, either).

      That said, all KDE apps support filing bugs through Help > Report Bug. (I'd tell you what that uses if I were in KDE right now, but I'm not. Sorry.)

    2. Re:Bugzilla alternatives by Jason+O'Neil · · Score: 3, Informative
      I'm using Indefero (http://indefero.net/). It's PHP based, and made to be similar to google code, so very bare bones - but I find that is less intimidating to non-developers. (BTW, the website emphasises prices and planning and stuff, but it is open source - the prices are for their hosted service.)

      -jason

    3. Re:Bugzilla alternatives by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you can't cope with large numbers of bug reports from non-technical people then your bug tracking system is broken. There is no better way to piss off users/customers than by making it impossible for them to report the problems they are having.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:Bugzilla alternatives by dr2chase · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have no trouble reporting bugs. If there's any obstacles along the way to reporting the bug, I bail, and simply post them on my blog. With snarky commentary, of course, because by then I'm in a bad mood.

      Best of all, is when random strangers with the same bug, find my blogged bug report instead of the bug database, and then start posting comments on it.

      Years ago, a friend of mine showed me the "killer app for Python", and it was the stack traces. When their (Python-based) product crashed in the field, its driver would bundle it all up in a zip file, and ask the user for permission to forward it to the developers, with the usual reassurances that all data discovered in the process would be treated as confidential. Bug report arrives, the stack trace (with variables etc, it's Python, right?) contains all the necessary info, the next interaction with the customer, is to tell them where to download the bug-fixed version of the product. "No time wasted on annoying human interaction, customer thinks we are attentive geniuses, everyone productive and happy."

  2. Re:Really? by BZ · · Score: 2

    If you look at the screenshots, only the first one shows emails. The other ones have them elided.

    That first screenshot is the list of the top 20 or so contributors to the Mozilla project over the past year. Those e-mail addresses are all over the hg log for the project, the public project mailing lists, etc. So they're not exactly a secret...

  3. Bingo! by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

    Does it also leverage state-of-the art paradigms shifts in order to deliver an exponential breakthrough experience?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re:Bingo! by Jurily · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, it does have pretty charts.

  4. Re:Really? by sapphire+wyvern · · Score: 2

    I assumed that "exhaust data" is the data that gets discarded by a lossy compression engine. I mean, that data's gotta go somewhere, right?

    And that's why the air coming out of desktop computers smells faintly of ozone.