@Regina,
Yes, Wizard is a reference to the level of mastery that a solver must
possess, and is one of those "which one of these words does not belong"
solutions.
There is a well-known *logarithmic* difficulty scale that has been used
over 40 years for problem difficulty. It might be worth adapting:
(after unknown),
00 easy - immediately solvable by someone willing to do it
10 simple - takes minutes
20 medium, average - quarter hour
30 moderate, an evening
40 difficult, challenging, non-trivial (term project, GSoC...)
50 unsolved, deep, requires a breakthrough, research
(PhD dissertation)
60 intractable (that I just made up - probably not something that
is technically feasible regardless of skill, Nobel Prize,
P = NP, etc.)
I suspect this scale has too much at the low end and perhaps not
enough steps at the high end. Perhaps there are two factors - skills and
work factor - how long for someone of the necessary skills? Or else
work factor is suggestive of the level of skill?
easy - minutes (fixing a typo on a web page)
simple - hour(s)
moderate - days
difficult, challenging - weeks
hard, demanding - months
stubborn - years (aka, intractable)
All of these assume fluency with basic tools and facility with the subject
matter of the issue.
For example, fixing change-tracking is at least hard.
- Dennis
-----Original Message-----
From: Regina Henschel [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 13:04
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] "difficulty" field for Bugzilla
Hi Rob,
Rob Weir schrieb:
> As you have probably noticed, I'm engaged in a variety of initiatives
> to grow the community, bring in more volunteers, etc. One additional
> piece that I think would be useful is to add a new field to Bugzilla
> to indicate the difficulty level of the bug. Of course, this will
> often not be known. But in some cases, we do know, and where we do
> know we can indicate this.
>
> What this allows us to do is then have search filters that return only
> open easy bugs. These are ideal for new developer volunteers on the
> project who are looking for items that match their lesser familiarity
> with the code. It also allows a developer to step up to more
> challenging bugs over time.
>
> A similar approach, which they called "easy hacks", was successfully
> used by LibreOffice.
>
> If there are no objections, I'll add a new field to Bugzilla called
> "cf_difficulty_level", and which a drop down UI with the following
> choices:
>
> UNKNOWN (default)
> TRIVIAL
> EASY
> MODERATE
> HARD
> WIZARD
WIZARD is used in AOO UI in the meaning of 'assistant' or step by step
workflow. Therefore it might be not understood here. I need to look up
other meanings in a dictionary. I would drop it. HARD as highest step is
sufficient.
TRIVIAL sounds devaluating to me. Perhaps BEGINNER or STARTER is more
neutral? Being able to start is not only a question, whether the task is
easy or not from an objective point of view. Beyond that a mentor is
needed. Perhaps a category MENTORED instead of TRIVIAL is useful. A
senior developer would set it (and put himself in CC) if he is willing
to guide a newcomer.
>
> (I'm certainly open to variations on the names)
>
> I'd then rely on other developers to help "seed" the database with
> some TRIVIAL and EASY bugs, so new volunteers will have something to
> work with as they familiarize themselves with the project.
>
> I'll wait 72 hours, etc.
In general I thing it is a good idea. Using Bugzilla has the advantage,
that it is not necessary to hold a Wiki page in sync with Bugzilla.
Kind regards
Regina
