Tonya Souther of Team Phoenix had a few things to say about Linden Lab's new JIRA policy. Although some categories had been closed to public viewing, such as security issues, most were accessible to the public for residents to read to see if a reported bug was the same as the problem they were having.According to the JIRA update on Thursday September 6, this will no longer be the case. In the summary of changes, it was stated "Second Life users will only see their own reported issues." No longer can residents read and compare.
Tonya mentioned earlier on her blog about a JIRA being made secret, which held up the release of a Firestorm update, "as I said in my last post here, having the JIRAs be secret hurts TPVs, too. It makes it much harder for us to know whether the bug we're hunting is a LL bug. It also makes it harder for us to realize that we just fixed an LL bug and contribute the fix back to them. They spend a lot of time assuring us they want our contributions. This change makes that much more questionable."
She felt the decision will hurt in other ways, noting the "people who watch the LL JIRA and help with triaging, work with reporters to make sure the needed information it present, and suggest fixes without ever writing a line of code." Also, the move ensures the Lab will get a number of JIRAs that are duplicates of others already filed because no one could see that someone else reported on the same issue. This decision, she concluded, will further strain relations between the Lab and Second Life's residents.
One can read the blog update in full Here. There's also a thread in the Second Life forums Here.
*Addition* Hamlet Au later put up his comments, notably referring to blogger Darius Gothly whom thought this marked the beginning of "The End of Second Life."
Bixyl Shuftan
The Jira has, is, and always will be the WORST possible way of reporting problems and suggesting fixes. Having bug reports secret is not a big thing to me.
ReplyDeleteBut. The Jira is also where people go to suggest new features and describe something they want. That does require public access and everyone being able to see (and vote for) suggestions that would improve the system. By getting rid of that ability outright, LL is telling us that it's not going to listen to user suggestions for improvements anymore.
I personally would get rid of the JIRA altogether, replace it with a better bug reporting system, and have an area of the forums where people can discuss what they really want to see fixed in SL. I cannot name anyone outside SL who thinks the Jira works -- most users don't know how to report a bug and couldn't get through the reporting procedures if their lives depended upon it. So good for LL for improving the bug reporting.
Now LL, go forth and add a New Features Discussion section to the forums to replace an important function you've eliminated.
amen
DeleteIf they were smart enough to do that, they would have rolled it out at the same time as hiding all this. I never used the Jira myself, but I know quite a few who follow it. This is just another boneheaded move by LL. They Just Don't Care. --- Xym
DeleteThankyou for such an informative blog. Read about OKR in this guide .
ReplyDelete