<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Following up a bit, we now have a "Community Support" label (<div><a href="https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/labels/Community%20support">https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/labels/Community%20support</a> ). Please use it for cases that are not clearly a bug and not clearly a "how do I ...." question.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Tom</div><div><br></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 10:22 AM Ryan May <<a href="mailto:rmay31@gmail.com">rmay31@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with closing issues quickly. If in a developer's judgement (making sure to exercise care) and issue is resolved, it should be closed, period. This communicates the status clearly to the user and to other developers, so that people are not wasting their time. To leave an issue open otherwise just means many people look at it again for no good reason, and somebody has to come along later and close it anyway.<div><br></div><div>Having said that, I agree with the idea that the way we're closing these out is often seeming quite curt and short. While I don't believe this is done with any mean intent, more effort needs to be put into the responses to create an environment that's welcoming to support inquiries, especially for novice users. For example:</div><div><br></div><div>"Don't use the issue tracker for questions."</div><div><br></div><div>would be better as:</div><div><br></div><div>"Thanks for the question. This would really be better suited to ask on Stack Overflow or our mailing lists [link] where more users who can help will see your question.'</div><div><br></div><div>Also</div><div><br></div><div>"This is not a bug in matplotlib"</div><div><br></div><div>would sound better:</div><div><br></div><div>"Thanks for letting us know. I think this is really an issue with [blank], would you mind reporting this problem to them [link provided]? Feel free to re-open this issue if you think this is incorrect."</div><div><br></div><div>The problem is not a technical one, but a social one--communication is hard. Hamstringing those going through the effort to look through and close out issues isn't the answer, though.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Ryan</div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 11:59 AM Benjamin Root <<a href="mailto:ben.v.root@gmail.com" target="_blank">ben.v.root@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>I think part of the issue is literally how quickly some of these issues are being closed, not so much that they are being closed. I have seen issues get closed within minutes of being opened up, and even as a long-time contributor, that has come across as jarring to me. I worry that it may convey a lack of consideration of the issue. Even if we know 100% that the issue should be closed, closing within just a few minutes might make submitters feel like their issue wasn't fully absorbed. If they spent 10 minutes or more writing up their issue, and it gets closed in 2 minutes, they might feel like there was a net negative amount of effort in the discussion. Maybe the problem is totally on their end and they are doing something wrong, but closing the issue so quickly may make them feel like they are left adrift.</div><div><br></div><div>I especially worry about the issues that get closed and redirected to the mailing list or stackoverflow. In the past few months, I think I have only seen one issue get re-raised on the mailing list. I don't follow stackoverflow, so I don't know if those issues are getting discussed there or not. Does anybody have a sense for that?<br></div><div><br></div><div>And finally, we need to remember that we may indeed be misreading some issues. I accidentally closed an issue too quickly last week, too, because I thought it was the same-old mplot3d can't render things right problem. Turns out it was much more nuanced, and while we couldn't really solve the problem anyway, I think I did pounce too quickly on that close button.</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers!</div><div>Ben Root</div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 1:41 PM OceanWolf via Matplotlib-devel <<a href="mailto:matplotlib-devel@python.org" target="_blank">matplotlib-devel@python.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,Lucida Grande,sans-serif;font-size:16px">But doesn't the issue of triage mean we distinguish between issues/PRs based on severity e.g. ranging from critical to wishlist. To me at least open suggests that the issue still exists and closed means that it doesn't exist as a issue for us, either because we don't see it as an issue, or because it has been fixed, and thus says nothing about triage state.<br><div id="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1541172849736_24469"><span></span></div><div class="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691qtdSeparateBR" id="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1541172849736_24574"><div dir="ltr" id="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1541172849736_24823">In terms of workflow I see the difference as if something has been marked closed and someone comes along with the same issue, it can give the suggestion that we don't value the reopening the issue/PR, and thus it indicates that we value it a waste of time for anyone to spend their time on it, and for some issues that might exist as the case seeing something as out of scope for MPL, but for others we should just assign a low triage status to it so that if we get people super keen about a particular issue then we let them know that we welcome their input on it :).<br></div><br></div><div class="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yahoo_quoted" id="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1541172849736_24578" style="display:block"> <div style="font-family:Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,Lucida Grande,sans-serif;font-size:16px" id="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1541172849736_24577"> <div style="font-family:HelveticaNeue,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,Lucida Grande,Sans-Serif;font-size:16px" id="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1541172849736_24576"> <div dir="ltr" id="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1541172849736_24575"> <font id="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1541172849736_24872" size="2" face="Arial"> <hr id="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1541172849736_27352" size="1"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold">From:</span></b> Eric Firing <<a href="mailto:efiring@hawaii.edu" target="_blank">efiring@hawaii.edu</a>><br> <b><span style="font-weight:bold">To:</span></b> <a href="mailto:matplotlib-devel@python.org" target="_blank">matplotlib-devel@python.org</a> <br> <b><span style="font-weight:bold">Sent:</span></b> Friday, 2 November 2018, 18:14<br> <b><span style="font-weight:bold">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Matplotlib-devel] please be slower to close bug reports from first-time reporters<br> </font> </div> <div class="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691y_msg_container" id="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1541172849736_24667"><br><div dir="ltr" id="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1541172849736_24666">On 2018/11/02 5:03 AM, Thomas Caswell wrote:<br clear="none">> The backlog problem is also real, however I am not sure that just <br clear="none">> closing old issues / PRs and rapidly closing new issues will actually <br clear="none">> make it better. It will make the number smaller, but the underlying <br clear="none">> issues (either the bugs or documentation deficiencies) will still be there.<br clear="none">> <br clear="none"><br clear="none">Tom,<br clear="none"><br clear="none">It is a matter of triage. I think you are missing a critical point: <br clear="none">closing issues *can* make the situation better by reducing the time that <br clear="none">is lost on scanning them, or diving into them, when that time would be <br clear="none">better spent actually fixing something. Furthermore, the list of open <br clear="none">issues can simply be overwhelming, discouraging work by existing <br clear="none">developers, and probably also discouraging potential developers from <br clear="none">joining us.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">It is not a tragedy if a genuine issue is closed. If it is reporting a <br clear="none">major problem, it will crop up again, and eventually get the necessary <br clear="none">attention.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">There will *always* be bugs and documentation deficiencies; the question <br clear="none">is how to maximize available developer time and attention, and how to <br clear="none">make the best use of it.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Eric<div class="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yqt1811140768" id="m_-4336053772914418802m_7138135078925256849m_-1111404403906673691yqtfd22272"><br clear="none">_______________________________________________<br clear="none">Matplotlib-devel mailing list<br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="mailto:Matplotlib-devel@python.org" target="_blank">Matplotlib-devel@python.org</a><br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/matplotlib-devel" target="_blank">https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/matplotlib-devel</a><br clear="none"></div></div><br><br></div> </div> </div> </div></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="m_-4336053772914418802gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>Ryan May<br><br></div></div></div>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Thomas Caswell<br><a href="mailto:tcaswell@gmail.com" target="_blank">tcaswell@gmail.com</a></div>