I’ve just reluctantly filed a Jira issue on something fairly trivial, but something that’s not working correctly for me. I say reluctantly because I still find the changes to the Jira in September, extremely disappointing. I actually pondered whether to both filing a report because the whole process is now so disappointing. The only real improvement I see is that it’s now easier to report an issue because they’re mostly filed under the Bug report project but beyond that, it’s an unsatisfactory experience.
One area where it is partcularly disappointing is that you no longer even get feedback on your report that the issue has been fixed, to quote the September blog post:
“Once a Bug reaches the “Accepted” or “Closed” status, it will not be updated. You can watch the Release Notes to see when and if a fix has been released for your issue.”
I’m sorry, but that’s a really poor approach to something which is a two way street, people take time out to report an issue, they should certainly be alerted that a fix has been released from their initial report, to not do so is really poor form and is one of the issues that caused me to ponder whether or not I should bother reporting the current issue I’ve observed.
Another quote from the September blog post:
“Second Life users will only see their own reported issues. When a Bug reaches the “Been Triaged” status, they will no longer be able to add comments to their issue.”
Now ignoring the first part of the quote, which is in itself horrid, the second part is where my last reported Jira issue sits. That one has a status of Been Triaged. However the thing is, it appears to have been fixed, so I wanted to add a comment to state this on my report, however as the quote states, you can no longer add comments when an issue has a status of Been Triaged. Therefore, to update my Jira I had to edit it and add that the issue seems to have been resolved, this was for my sake as much as the Lindens because now I can see that I’ve added a note to say it seems to have been fixed, it’s a note to myself as much as anything else.
I can understand the frustrations the Lindens had with the Jira, the flame wars, the unhelpful comments. I really do appreciate that they want to cut the noise from the Jira, but as it stands it’s a very unsatisfactory experience. People report issues because it’s the right thing to do and they will continue to report isssues because it’s the right thing to do but the process really does need some revision and the very minimum should be that your Jira report gets updated when a fix has been released, you shouldn’t have to watch the release notes. The concept of not telling a reporter an issue is fixed is very poor form in customer relations.
I’m apparently in the minority when I say that all the “noise” that appeared on the JIRA in its prior form was of no great impediment. In fact, quite the contrary .. I found that issues with a lot of noise, flamewars, whining and threatening .. those were the Issues that really needed immediate high-priority attention. That people were pushed to the point of posting such extreme words indicated that not only was it something that had a drastic and severe effect on them (or their business) but also indicated that the process by which LL resolved such issues needed revamping.
But as is so often the case with LL, rather than identify a fault within their own walls, they clung tight to the assertion that all of the problems come from outside and from customers, and thus like a vicious babysitter they yanked it away from all of us .. doing more damage to the entire process and platform than any negative post EVER did.
I agree wholeheartedly with you Ciaran, the JIRA process needs to be reworked again. Rodvik did promise that they would revisit the issue after a time to determine if it needed any tweaking. I think the evidence is overwhelming that it needs serious and fundamental changes. But alas, I think LL once again will stand firm in the position that “it’s fixed now, so we’re not changing it” .. as they have so often done in the past.
I find myself in both agreement and disagreement, which makes me sympathise somewhat with Linden Lab on the issue.
Yes the popular Jira threads with lots of commentary were indicators of hot issues for the community, they indicated issues that users found important and even though those issues may not have seemed pressing to a techie, to the community, they most certainly were.
On the other hand some of the flaming and commentary made it difficult to address the issues, with some people’s points lost within the stream of comments. I’m firmly in the camp that says all views should be heard, even when people appear to be complaining for the sake of it, a complianing user is still a bird in the hand.
If their reason for keeping the Jira in its current form is stubborness, then really LL are certainly being unhelpful, the Jira changes do need to be revisited. The other thing that I didn’t highlight here is that it could well be that someone has already reported the issue I have. I logged in with different viewers, took screenshots, cropped them, uploaded them, referenced them in my report and it could all be for nowt because the issue is a known one. Again, this needs looking at.
I’ve come to the conculsion that LL’s management refer to users as “residents” as a means to avoid the wider implications inherent in the the term “customers”.
Yes, the two have the same underlying expectations, but using “residents” embues a warm, touchy-feely-fuzzy reaction while still keeping users at least a barge-pole length away.
Yes agreed but they want us to report issues, they should be more courteous in their relations with us. The current situation is simply disappointing.
I think SNOW-1716 shows what a mess the open JIRA was. I’ve written my take on that in my blog.
My take from talking with Lindens is this is not going to change any time soon.
For it to change the JIRA maker needs to change some things in the JIRA’s system, Atlassian. Our complaints to have much effect Atlassian needs to hear them. An objective description of how LL uses the JIRA might help.
I do think a follow up emails would be good. But, JIRA items get moved to a private section of the JIRA so that the Lindens can freely discuss changes that affect security issues and other confidential issues. That pretty much breaks the association needed to inform all those that report the same problem.
From the SL user side this is a painful problem. Form the Lab’s side of things I suspect it looks great. The data needed to show the problems we see simply cannot be collected and tabulated. That means management is never going to see the problem and therefore is unlikely to change their view.
Unless someone has a way to collect the data, I think we are stuck.
I know they’ve been looking at ways on how to make certain projects more user friendly, a Linden commented on a Jira in a project where my reported Jira became invisible to me because it got imported into an area where I had no access. The Marketplace team also want a more open section Jira.
I can most definitely understand why Linden Lab were frustrated with how Jira’s turned out at times. However I’ve reported issues in the open CHUI project whereby collaboration certainly helps and also in another section, which wasn’t open to all, but I could edit my own Jira to communicate with another user who had reported a similar issue, it was a workaround but it worked all the same.