Linden Lab Replaces JIRA Reporting System with Simplified Bug Tracker - Bad Idea, Says Top Community Developer

Linden Lab just replaced its JIRA reporting system with a "bug tracker", which means, as the announcement explains, "All bugs should now be filed in the new BUG project, using the more streamlined submission form." The original JIRA was definitely not streamlined, and not user friendly, and consequently, enabled a lot of system abuse (SLers ranting about problems not precisely bugs), and probably used by a small fraction of the userbase. All that to one side, leading third party viewer developer Tanya Souther says it's a bad idea for Linden Lab to make this transition:

This is only going to hurt LL. It will cause many, many more duplicate JIRAs for them to sort through. Right now, it's common and good practice to search for an existing JIRA to make sure that the problem you're about to report isn't known. That will go away. There's also a bunch of 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. Those folks just got the finger.

Much more here. My personal take is a bit more mixed:

It's a good idea to replace the existing JIRA with a bug tracker that's easier for average consumers to use, but pretty foolish not to give SL's programming community another resource in its place. (For all the reasons Tonya gives.) Darrius Gothly thinks the move signals the end of Second Life itself:

By cutting off each and every bug report from Community Involvement, Linden Lab is signalling their displeasure with our ability to share thoughts, solutions, opinions and ideas about the various technical and operational issues that we all run into from time to time. They are building even bigger walls than ever before. And they are destroying all pretense of giving a damn about Second Life.

Which is a pretty extreme reaction, and resembles the kind of rants that SLers often posted in the JIRA. So I can understand why Linden Lab no longer wants to wade through them anymore. But I don't understand why they're not offering a publicly accessible alternative which less rants, and more resources.

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Comments

[Metacam Oh]

Is it going to make a difference at all? I am still waiting for them to fix depth of field on AMD cards, is this bug tracker going to make them actually fix that? Obviously whether AMD card users have depth of field isn't going to change anything monetarily for them so I understand it isn't a priority, but nothing that has ever been buggy just for me has ever been put on priority by the Lab. My question is why bother, and what needs to take place for a bug to be on their priority list?

[shockwave yareach]

I disagree. The Jira was the worst single idea for bug tracking that ever was invented. First, you had to KNOW that the silly thing existed -- if you are a noob and see black triangles, you have no idea how to report it. Then, the Jira submission mess required you to know the details of what is client and what is server in order to submit it. If you didn't know what part of the system did what, too bad for you. Then, any tom dick and harry could erase your bug for any reason whatsoever.

Just have a BUG button on the viewer, let the viewer then capture a screen shot and location data, and let the user fill in some details about what isn't working. It's ridiculous to think 95% of SL's population knows how to use the Jira properly in the first place, or bothers even if they do (which I don't). If you want a bug reporting system, you have to have one that people can actually report bugs they encounter or you may as well not have it at all.

[Maxx Nordlicht]

It may be a good idea to have a simpler way to report bugs. But then hide them for everyone isn't the smart way. (but who would have thought otherwise from LL).

There are a lot of links from various pages, blogs and wiki to the jira so people can find solutions or add their vote (ok..watch) to important issues. But hey... now there are no more import bugs anymore. Win situation for LL. (at least they think in their short vision)

[Indigo Mertel]

I can understand Linden Lab's need of changing the way JIRA worked. What I don't understand is why they haven't made any effort to discuss the matter with the users.

Once again LL takes an unilateral decision which negatively affects users and deprive them of a resource. As long as LL insists in working against the user community, instead of working together, the result can only be another wave of outrage.

[Shug Maitland]

re. "- - the kind of rants that SLers often posted in the JIRA. So I can understand why Linden Lab no longer wants to wade through them anymore."
This should have had a simple solution. Set up the jira so every user can collapse individual comments they do not want to see, possibly flag them as "wackadoodle" and skip to the next comment. Cutting of all conversation because some people are rude is very kindergarten -- and self destructive.

[shockwave yareach]

Shug - the fact that any Jira user could close a bug report led to many instances of griefing. Letting anyone mark this or that for deletion does NOT help real bug reports reach the ears of anyone in the lab who could fix them or study them.

The bug reports don't need to be public and votable. But I'll concede that the "New Features" bit does need to be out in public and votable in some way. It would be a cinch to simply move that feature out of Jira and into the Forums where a) everyone can see and b) everyone can discuss it.

But as little as LL has added to SL that we've asked for, be it Jira, Forums, or telepathic insertion of kittens carrying embedded dream messages, I don't believe the lab will implement any more of the requests than they've done thus far.

[Saffia Widdershins]

One reason why the Jiras would fill up with massive comments from people (just take a look at the Second Names one sometime) was because people felt that there was no other forum that the Lab were looking at. OK, it sometimes seemed doubtful that they were looking at the Jira - but at least they were *meant* to be looking at the Jira.

The problem is that one by one, fora where Second Life users could collectively interact with Linden Lab on issues they felt were important have been whittled down to ... well, basically nothing now.

[Hamlet Au]

"Set up the jira so every user can collapse individual comments they do not want to see, possibly flag them as 'wackadoodle' and skip to the next comment"

I'm thinking a Reddit-style upvote/downvote system is crucial. Some rants are definitely worth LL reading, but only the civil, non-wackadoodle ones.

[Archangel Mortenwold]

Well argued, Shug.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

We need access to see all the bugs (or issues as they were) that have been filed. That way we know when something is known to be wrong and can explain that to others. From now on we will be fishing in the dark.

Get rid of the ranters by making bugs only browsable if you want (with maybe access to add comments for special trusted user contributors) but the commiunity needs to know what bugs are out there to assist users and Linden Lab.

[Ezra]

"Linden Lab Replaces Jira Reporting System" is a bit strongly worded considering it's still Jira. It's just that all bugs go into one Bug category now and we're unable to follow the advice the Create Issue panel still gives:

"Be sure to search first and see if anyone else has reported the same issue. If not, please describe your issue concisely and specifically. Fill in this and all other fields to the best of your knowledge -- more detailed info helps us help you!"

Love or hate Jira, this is how it works. Being able to see each others similar and duplicate bug reports informs on whether we should and how we should file issues. Removing our ability to use Jira as it is intended to be use doesn't "simplify" it, it cripples it to the point they may as well swap it out with an easier to use email form if all we're going to do is toss text at 'WorkingOnit Linden' rather than engage in discussion with each other and participating Lindens in a common goal to solve an issue.

This is pretty much the opposite of what needed to happen. The Jira needed voting back and for watch counts to actually mean something. An automated script that sent top Jira items to the blog for example so that things like Oz's call to action for more test meshes for the deformer would've been known by more people before the drama.

The Jira, again, love or hate it, was one of two real avenues to communicate with a Linden. The other is user groups which most obviously can't attend since it's live and happens during the Lindens work hours which just so happens to be 95% of everyone elses work hours. The Jira was a place to stay in touch with issues anyway.

So, they reduce our ability to file quality bugs and they also cut out one more communication channel with us. The only blogger on the site is 'Linden Lab' and now the only person responsible for our bugs is 'WorkingOnIt Linden'. I assume next user groups will be swapped out for scheduled appointments with scripted listeners in wooden blocks that may or may not be concerned with what we're talking about.

This really shouldn't be used as an opportunity to bash the Jira software or start calling each other wackadoodles. You either think reduced collective communication between Linden Lab and ourselves is a good thing or a bad thing and that's really all there is to it.

[TG]

It's unbelievable, how unsocial LL is getting little by little, even if their main product is a very social virtual world. Sooner or later it will be seen, that giving up Jira was a bad idea. Since LL seems never admit their own mistakes, it will just level ground for their rivals...

[Eve Kazan]

@Metacam Oh : Thank you so much to talk about AMD card !!! I have an AMD card and the DOF is my big deception.

Im not a jira user, but there is few days, after an update of my drivers, i met big crashing troubles, i was very lost (im a pure noob with technical issue) but i have searched in google and i have found a jira about my problem ! woowoo And i have found a little solution in the comments (a rollback lol) !

Without that, i don't know if my problem should have been resolved ...

[elizabeth (16)]

it probably makes sense to linden to do this

there is a very good Answers section on the blogs where there is quite a few residents who can pretty much answer everything that a general resident can ask about problems they got. Old school Mentors most of them, still doing what they always done. the Creation Commerce and Tech forums are pretty good as well for finding out stuff thats not working. even ranting as well if you feel like it

[elizabeth (16)]

ps. shockwave has it right about bug reporting in the viewer. if it can be done as easy as filing an abuse report then it can be done the same for a bug report

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can also make it so that if crash then can be prompted if you want to send a crash report after relog. we got the autosend part already. so could make a checkbox prompt switch as well

[Qie Niangao]

@elizabeth: So now bug reports will be handled as are abuse reports: sold by volume, not by weight.

And "Answers"--is this sarcasm? It's a cumbersome way to get somebody else to search the wiki. If those "old school Mentors" ever successfully handle anything that's actually challenging, you can be sure they use the jira. Or did, up until now.

[shockwave yareach]

Qie - surely you are kidding. So a newcomer isn't going to be able to find a solution for their question in Answers or the wiki, but you think they will be able to in the Jira???

Let's do a test. Say I'm a noob and I have a problem with SL; let's say it won't start. Type that into Google, and what pages appear? Surprise surprise surprise, pages upon pages of Q&A within the ANSWERS area of the forums!

Let's see how many pages google has before the very first JIRA page shows up. Ah, here it is -- the 24th page listed. And how odd; Penny Arcade has 3X the pages listed for that question than the Jira has.

Guess the Jira just doesn't measure up as a Help system. But then, what do you expect for an INTERNAL bug tracking tool that customers were never supposed to see, never mind use? Using Jira to report bugs is like driving a tank to buy groceries. It's difficult and isn't what the vehicle was intended for.

[elizabeth (16)]

@Qie - old school mentors. dunno if they were actual SL Mentors but people like Rolig, Innula, Peggy, Dora etc. they old school. you old school as well yourself. you know stuff as well and you care enough to work your way through the issues that some person has got. i seen you doing it in Answers. even if you are a grumpy world-weary cynic sometimes you still rise above that everytime. i seen you do it time and time again (:

+

is not just about SL only stuff either. example: was person came to the Animation forum. had a problem synching Daz anims with SL. the old school came out and helped sort it. is all kinds of stuff like this happens every day

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what will happen is same when someone has a problem with their viewer and goes to Answers. first thing they get asked is to post a dump of their Help \ About

first thing the old school are going to ask is: please post your Bug Report. and then it will go from there

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the old school on the forums actual dont care that linden dont go on there. they just help other people as best they can. and way more times than ever happens on the Jira people do get an actual answer that works for them

[Qie Niangao]

@elizabeth and @shockwave: That help--in Answers, forums, from old-school Mentors, whatever--much of it traces back to bug reports in the jira that, up until now, we could access directly. Nobody ever expected newcomers to go to the jira directly, but tracing back word-of-mouth for answers to their more difficult problems, a very large percentage of those answers originated with jira issues and especially comments providing workarounds and attempts to isolate the problems. That's going to be done elsewhere now, not in the jira, and that's bad for everybody--including those newcomers who will get less timely and less accurate answers to their questions.

And so will scripters and other content creators, landowners, TPV developers, businesses -- and even Lindens.

[shockwave yareach]

Qie -- I'm a builder and a scripter since 2006. I use the RPGnet website and the official site for LSL function definitions. I've used the Answers section of the forums for odd tech problems (relating to USB devices causing VFS to fail to start). I'm not some johnny come lately, mkay? I had first land once.

In all of my years -- all of them -- the only use I've had for Jira was to vote for a few improvements I wanted to see. There were no fixes there and no tech help to be had. And none of the voted on things ever got implemented.

Just because you are comfortable with the current model of doing things doesn't mean we shouldn't make it easier for ordinary users to report the bugs they are experiencing and actually get their report seen by a Linden. I want to see a working bug report system and the fixes added to Answers, because the Answers section in the forums is where Google and the second life website itself points to -- not the Jira.

[Qie Niangao]

shockwave, if you managed to use KFM functions this spring, or Pathfinding this summer, without access to information deriving from jira issues, you must be clairvoyant. And that's just an to illustrate the dependency of new features on access to jira information. There are plenty of long-standing bugs that are really only found on the jira: How long would anyone have to scratch their head over SVC-387 or SVC-23 before they realized the fault was not in their script?

It's fine to have some alternate workflow for bug reports by newbies or the jira-averse. Just don't cripple the rest of us with it.