The Signpost

Technology report

The bugosphere, new mobile site and MediaWiki 1.18 close in on deployment

Contribute  —  
Share this
By Jarry1250

What is: the bugosphere?

Related articles
What is...?

Wikimedia Labs: soon to be at the cutting edge of MediaWiki development?
23 April 2012

MediaWiki 1.20wmf01 hits first WMF wiki, understanding 20% time, and why this report cannot yet be a draft
16 April 2012

What is: agile development? and new mobile site goes live
12 September 2011

The bugosphere, new mobile site and MediaWiki 1.18 close in on deployment
29 August 2011

Code Review backlog almost zero; What is: Subversion?; brief news
18 July 2011

Wikimedia down for an hour; What is: Wikipedia Offline?
30 May 2011

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
25 April 2011

What is: localisation?; the proposed "personal image filter" explained; and more in brief
21 March 2011


More articles

This week, bugmeister Mark Hershberger coined the term "bugosphere" to describe "the microcosm that evolves around a particular instance of Bugzilla" such as the MediaWiki Bugzilla. In this edition of What is?, we look at the processes and procedures underlying the Wikimedia bug reporting system (in Bugzilla terms, a 'bug' may be a problem with the existing software or a request for features to be added in future versions, which may also be referred to as an 'enhancement' when differentiation is desired).

Bug #1 was filed on 10 August 2004; as of time of writing, 30602 bugs have been submitted. Of those, approximately twenty-four thousand have been closed, whilst six thousand are still open (about 60 percent of which are requests for enhancements). Not all bugs related to Wikimedia wikis; the MediaWiki Bugzilla collates reports from all users of the software, in addition to bug reports that do not relate to MediaWiki but instead relate to Wikimedia websites. In any given week, approximately 90 bugs will be opened, and approximately 80 closed (in extraordinary weeks, such as bug sprints, as many as 65 extra bugs may be closed). As such, Bugzilla serves as central reference for monitoring what has been done, and what still needs doing.

Buggie, the Bugzilla mascot

Registration on Bugzilla is free but necessary (logins are not shared between Bugzilla and Wikimedia wikis for many reasons, including the increased visibility of email addresses on Bugzilla). Anyone may comment on bugs; comments are used principally to add details to bug reports, or suggestions on how they should be fixed. Voting in support of a bug is possible, but in general bugs are worked on by priority, or by area of expertise; few "critical"-rated bugs remain long enough to accumulate many votes. In January this year, the Foundation appointed Mark Hershberger as bugmeister, responsible for monitoring, prioritising and processing bug reports. More recently, he has been organising a series of "triages", when bugs are looked at and recategorised depending on their progress and severity. To file a bug or feature request, visit http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org, though it is usual to demonstrate a consensus before filing a request for a controversial feature or configuration change.

In brief

Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.

+ Add a comment

Discuss this story

These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try purging the cache.
  • To further confuse the numbers, not all bugs are bugs, they may be requests for features. Moreover not all closed bugs are "solved" they may be duplicate bugs (probably the biggest class), "won't-fix" closes or may even become irrelevant as the software evolves over the years. Rich Farmbrough, 14:32, 30 August 2011 (UTC).[reply]
All excellent points Rich :) It is a complicated business, but fortunately, the important business is the fixing rather than the trending. - Jarry1250 [Weasel? Discuss.] 14:35, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]



       

The Signpost · written by many · served by Sinepost V0.9 · 🄯 CC-BY-SA 4.0