Give a bug a hug

[Terry Judd]

I feel like there are plenty of ways that a point system that avoids some of these issues with the previous one could be implemented - fewer total votes per person, single votes per bug only, no or reduced value votes for community users, forced re-allocation of votes on a regular basis...

Yep, comments are a useful measure too - give them a value as well, maybe even allow someone who has used up all their votes to 'mine' some new ones that way - I reckon it shows they are engaged and contributing.

Terry...

On 8/10/19, 4:34 pm, "use-livecode on behalf of J. Landman Gay via use-livecode" <use-livecode-bounces at lists.runrev.com on behalf of use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:

    I think the politicking was a big factor in killing the voting system. I 
    remember many times when people would post to the list, urging others to 
    cast a vote for an issue so it would rise to the top. Those voters may 
    never have seen the bug but it sounded important and they had a vote or two 
    to spare.
    
    --
    Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw.com
    HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com
    On October 8, 2019 12:15:23 AM Richard Gaskin via use-livecode 
    <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
    
    > Terry Judd wrote:
    >
    > > I'd totally forgotten about the Bugzilla voting system. I liked that
    > > approach as well and agree that bringing it back could help both us
    > > and LC to prioritise fixes.
    >
    > Voting is one of those things that has a certain ring of rightness about
    > it (who doesn't love democracy?), and it's technically easy to do - so
    > why not?
    >
    > It turns out that people are much more complicated than the systems we
    > create. :)
    >
    > I had extensive discussion about the Bugzilla voting system with Kevin,
    > Mark Waddingham, and others there at LiveCode Ltd., in response to the
    > reactions many members of our community (including yours truly)
    > expressed when the voting was removed from the bug DB.
    >
    > What I learned was that although it seems like a good idea, in practice
    > it winds up being a less useful indicator of the "importance" of a bug
    > than one might intuitively think.
    >
    > In dry terms, one of the issues with it is that it conflates two very
    > different signals: one for the severity of a bug to the individual
    > experiencing it, and another for the number of people affected by the bug.
    >
    > In practice, these are some of how it played out:
    >
    > If I happen to feel a bug is super important, but five others think it's
    > merely worth reporting but isn't shutting down their work, my single
    > five-vote click doubles the number of votes.  What does that mean?
    >
    > We know it doesn't mean ten people find it unimportant.  And it doesn't
    > mean that two people find it extremely important.
    >
    > To fully understand exactly what a given tally score means requires
    > looking at the vote distribution, and also at the individual voters and
    > the details of their comments in the report.
    >
    > So if I feel like casting five votes against it there's no way to know
    > whether I'm actually having an urgent need, or just having a mood to
    > make a point about the age of the report, or any number of things. I
    > might have also contributed a comment or example which could explain my
    > intention, or no further information at all.
    >
    > And from time to time we may have a bug that's really critical, but so
    > far seen by fewer people.  Such a report may have far fewer votes than
    > one that has little harmful effect but has been seen more frequently.
    >
    > And then there are the times one of us will get particularly incensed
    > about a pet issue (some of you may recall times I've done this myself),
    > and we rant about it here and encourage votes for the pet issue.  I'm
    > sure some of those votes were people who actually experienced the issue,
    > but I'm equally sure some of those were just friendly people being
    > supportive, and not votes that would have arrived there organically
    > without the politicking.
    >
    > Give it some time and each of us can imagine other scenarios that muddy
    > the clarity of that vote signal.
    >
    > By the time a developer working on the bug looks at the various aspects
    > relevant to understanding what the vote tally really means, there's
    > enough familiarity with the details that an assessment of priority can
    > be made just as easily without it.
    >
    >
    > There remains at least one element which could loosely be seen as a sort
    > of voting: a bug's CC list.
    >
    > Usually an address will wind up there after that person has experienced
    > the bug, searched the DB for it, and found that it had been reported.
    > When that happens organically, the number of people subscribing to a bug
    > can be a useful addition that, with the other details of the report,
    > help the team evaluate priority.
    >
    > And being a single value per user, it's a single signal rather than a
    > conflation of two different signals as the old form with multiple votes
    > did, so it's more immediately clear what it's signifying.
    >
    > --
    >  Richard Gaskin
    >  LiveCode Community Liaison