Sub categories for bug reports

The application development category has sub categories, like QML or C++. That’s nice.

If we want to use this forum has a bug report platform, like the bug report category is leading to, I think we should have subcategories to be able to follow easily or search efficiently. Now, what could be these sub categories:

  • User oriented, with per app sub categories, like calendar, contacts
  • Action oriented, with sub categories like sync, browsing, contact management
  • Layer oriented, like OSS middleware, OSS UI, close source UI

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In my opinion, I would vote for the action oriented sub categories. What do you think ?

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This is difficult. While I wouldn’t go for option 3, the first are both … sensible.

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If there was a way to tag each bug (and be able to filter someway) you wouldn’t need subcategories

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@Maus, yeh, I put option 3 for completeness, but I don’t believe it’s a good idea ! But, it was also a provocative way to see if bugs pile up more on one or the other categories ;- )

@ApB, tags are another possibility, indeed. We’ve seen on TJC that tags can easily be multiplied a bit too much for efficient search. They added restrictions on tag creation to mitigate this. Maybe they can do something similar on this new forum…

Discussion is opened, but we need a sorting mechanism for bug reports in my opinion, otherwise bugs will easily go out of focus due to new ones arriving.

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The search function of this forum platform seems to be working ok (haven’t abused it but anyway) so i don’t think stuff will get easily lost.

And yes tags can get out of hand. Unless of course there is a predefined set of tags the user can use. Which seems like the best solution to me. I am not a fan of categories/subcategories/subsubcategories etc.

There is a possibility to allow only users with trust level 3 (or higher) to create new tags. I think that’s worth considering.

I suggested sub-categories, but the poll could be applied to tags also. I think we need a predefined set of sub-categories or tags (whatever classification mechanism is chosen) and depending on trust level, one should be able to re-tag or re-categorize to triage the various bugs.

My point is that, at the moment, I have no way to see what bugs are affecting the CalDAV sync for instance (not that there are many at the moment). Maybe, as @ApB mentioned, the search tool will be sufficient. If it’s the case, then, indeed, no need to classify with tags or sub-categories.

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Hmmm. No matter the level of trust people can still create tags that are similar to ones we have already and things get out of hand. Ie one trusted user tags something with email and another with e-mail (the example might be bad but i hope it illustrates what i am trying to say) and you end up with clutter.

It seems discourse has an option for admins to modify tags. So even if we end up having clutter, we might be able to fix them afterwards. I don’t know how well it works in practice though.

The predefined set removes the need for administration (changing tags etc). Or at least reduces it by some degree.

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One sub-category we should have to avoid android apps bug reporting to the native apps or system ones, or?

But all could be done with tags as well.
Tags could be cluttered but categories as well if you really divide it into small enough sets.

So I am fine with both, pair.

We have now (well, already a few days ago) enabled tags in the bug reports category. There are tags for each Sailfish OS release and for each (Jolla supported) device. And for the SDK as well.

Unfortunately Discourse doesn’t allow dot in tags, so the version tags look a bit funny, like 3_4_0. But it seems people have already found them anyway!

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