Wednesday, 2018-01-10

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openstackgerritZara proposed openstack-infra/storyboard master: Remove vagrant setup  https://review.openstack.org/53236700:33
Zarapart of the effort to generally update things a bit :)00:34
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-openstackstatus- NOTICE: Gerrit is being restarted due to slowness and to apply kernel patches14:59
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Zarastoryboard meeting in 15m18:44
diablo_rojoI even updated the Agenda :)18:57
SotK:D18:58
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persiaThe idea of "show all tasks assigned to this Team" one is interesting.  My worry is that it might increase "camping" behaviour, wherein teams assign bugs long before there are resources to work on them, which can discourage new folk from submitting opinions or patches.20:01
Zarayeah I'm thinking about who uses a project view normally, currently have: 'current contributors' 'potential contributors scoping things out' '?'20:01
persiaFixing that with "show all tasks that belong to project X" might help, but it might confuse developers who see a simple task description and then look at the story and reaslise the task isn't necessarily simple (or independent).20:02
persiaSophisticated bug filers will use a project view (to avoid filing a duplicate)20:02
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Zarait also might be possible to do it as tasks (grouped by story) or something, not sure. possibly not worth it20:04
ZaraI'm interested in a solution because confusions about the data model lead to the same questions being asked repeatedly, as people say 'it'd show the data model more clearly if it looked like this' but then talk about a different data model.20:06
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Zaraso this also can affect contributions, it takes a while to click20:09
persiaFundamentally, I think it ends up being a docs issue.  The more I think about tasks-in-project (potentially grouped by story), the more I think the story descriptions will confuse users of those views.20:10
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openstackgerritMerged openstack-infra/storyboard master: Cleanup Migration Docs  https://review.openstack.org/52917720:10
persiaWhereas if there are docs that map "task" to "bug" in people's minds, and then indicate that in order to create a task, you need to create a story to hold the description (because some tasks affect multiple things or are related), things may make more sense.20:11
persiaI also wonder if it would be sensible to answer "how do I create dependencies between stories" with "maybe you want to create a story with a few tasks, and describe the relation between the tasks in the story descripotion?"20:12
Zarabasically I want a big interactive flow chart that someone can zoom in and search that matches fig 3 or something20:12
Zarathat's unlikely to happen any time soon20:12
persiaPutting fig 3 in docs can probably happen sooner, and is a good start.20:13
Zarait even has rounded corners! :D but yeah, the less confusion the better because it affects both users and potential contributors.20:14
Zarafrom experience I spent a long time flailing around uselessly because I thought it went projects-stories-tasks and nothing made sense20:14
SotKyeah, I don't think that "tasks in projects" is a useful view20:15
Zara(I actually mean that I want the storyboard layout to look like that fig. also I want stars to come out of my cursor every time I click, but apparently everyone will block that. >_<)20:16
SotKif I can't have my navbar that looks like its been bitten, you don't get stars :P20:16
persiaI think having one's cursor leak stars is the sort of thing that belongs in user-override-css20:16
Zaramy patch to change every line to <blink> and <marquee> was already rejected20:17
Zaraplease let me have just this one~20:17
persiaBut, yeah, if even you ended up flailing from projects-stories-tasks, clearly there needs to be clearer documentation.20:17
Zarait's how I wound up writing some :D just needs a better home I think20:18
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SotKI think the current view is the one that makes the most sense, since "stories relating to project X" is the interesting thing to see, ideally I'd like to think of a way to distinguish that from the mostly identical "stories that are specifically for this project" in the UI so that people don't need to get confused then go read docs, but I think some clear docs in the same place as other docs is a good sta20:18
SotKrt20:18
persiaYes.  Users struggling with data model concepts are somewhat unlikely to expect to find the answer in the task tracker :)20:19
ZaraI put it there so I could find it later and link it in conversation in the meantime xD20:20
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persiaI'm glad you put it somewhere :)  It is a useful story, and one of the tasks is rehosting the graphical content.20:21
persiaI wonder if it makes sense to remove the "projects" and "project group" navigation items.20:21
SotKI can see an argument for that, especially now that one can link to search results20:22
persiaWhile I like the default start page, perhaps starting with the browse/filter view page makes sense, perhaps with text like "enter projects, tags, or text to find related stories"20:22
SotKhowever, we should probably support navigating to something like /project/openstack-infra/storyboard before we make them hard to discover20:23
persiaIs the link to search results or browse/filter results?20:23
ZaraI think removing the 'projects' button would upset people currently.20:23
SotKboth work20:23
* persia is impressed with the direct link feature20:23
persiaZara: I think most of the folk that would be upset are folk who have the wrong data model in their head, especially if browse/filter pages can have pretty URLs (like /project/openstack-infra/storyboard, or even /stories/browse?project=openstack-infra/storyboard20:24
persiaErr, s/project/project-group/20:24
ZaraI think that will be pretty much every person newly arriving at storyboard, since we're pretty unusual20:25
Zarapersonally I do find project-groups useful, though I think I might be in a minority20:26
* SotK will write a long response when he stops eating, but I broadly agree with persia on this I think20:26
persiaMaybe, but there are a *lot* of projects (and only more bring created with migrations).20:26
Zara(longer term I'd like it to not be there, and change that navbar pretty dramatically, but I think it might not help much in the short term)20:27
persiaIt's a long enough list that I can imagine a lot of people answering "of course not" to "Did you really want to look through a complete list of all the projects?  Seriously?  Even in the 21st century?"20:27
Zarajust speaking for myself, I actually often prefer a long list of things that I can do ctrl+f on than attempting to use any website's own search feature20:28
persiaI also use project-groups myself, but it isn't that hard to type "storyboard" or use a convenience bookmark vs. anything else.20:28
persiaZara: Is your pagination set to infinite?  I understand there are something on the order of 1000 projects in OpenStack, which means Ctrl-F over each of 10 pages of results except with unlimited pagination.20:29
persiaAnd 100 pages of results with default pagination.20:29
openstackgerritMerged openstack-infra/storyboard master: Remove Update tox Step  https://review.openstack.org/53042720:30
Zarasure, it's not great. :) but it is how I browse websites by default because I've had too many experiences of search boxes just not working. So I wouldn't be super surprised if other people did things similarly.20:30
Zaraso it's a heads up that I think you might get some similar responses if you pose that question to folk20:32
persiaI certainly do that, often disabling pagination (or choosing high defaults) to make it work better.  In practice, I end up typing more characters and having a less pleasant experience than folk that expect the interface to work, if I'm on a site where the interface axtually works (which it does, for StoryBoard)20:32
persiaAnd, yes, I would expect push-back, especially from current users, to the idea of removing the "project" and "project group" navigation start points.20:35
persiaIt also complicates facilities to star or subscribe to projects to not have those interfaces.20:35
persiaBut I think long-term, it will make for a better new-user experience, especially when onboarding folk steeped in e.g. JIRA20:36
persiaOn an unrelated note: is there a way to do "OR" in the filter interface?  I was looking at both the blocking-storyboard-migration and the storyboard-blocker tags, but was unable to imagine how to see both in the same list.20:39
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SotKafraid not (yet?) :(20:51
SotKso, persia's reasoning basically matches my own20:53
SotKit feels to me like the only use of the project/project group list views is to work around the fact that its hard to find a project some other way20:54
SotK(assume project is project + project group)20:55
persiaThat's subtly different than my reasoning.  Mine is based on the idea that looking for a project inherently reinforces the wrong mental data model.20:55
persiaWhereas filtering a list of stories to include only those that affect some project is slightly less likely to do so.20:56
SotKaha, so you are in favour of also removing views like https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/project/456 entirely?20:57
SotKin favour of https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/story/list?project_id=45620:57
persiaYes.20:58
persiaThe nice thing about the former is that it lets one get an overview of story descriptions, which would be sad to lose, but beyond that, I'm not sure it adds much.20:59
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persiaI also wonder how many users actually notice they can get the overviews vs. just clicking on the story names.20:59
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SotKindeed, I like some things about the former (its also the only place the project description is found, which may or may not be helpful)21:00
* SotK needs to give that part more thought21:01
persiaSo, yeah, I really like most of the detail UI elements of https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/project/456 , but am starting to believe it actively harmful for that URL to resolve to anything other than https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/story/list?project_id=45621:02
persiaFor instance, from the project view, it's hard to filter the results any (e.g. search for tag)21:02
persiaAnd I'm not sure it's clear that to do that, one needs to go to "Stories", re-enter the project name, and then the tag.21:03
SotKyep, its hard to disagree with that21:03
SotKI also feel like the only reason anyone would look for a project is to find the results of https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/story/list?project_id=45621:04
Zara(this adds nothing but I find it funny-- my current workflow to get there is to type '4' into the browser since I've memorised '456' and '457' for the api and webclient respectively and have them in the history)21:05
persiaheh21:05
SotKmy current workflow is to go to https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/story/list?status=active&project_group_id=5721:06
persiaI suspect that sort of workflow is going to be common for many folk who focus on only a couple of projects21:06
persiaThat's the view I usually want, but often I end up getting https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/project_group/57 along the way21:06
SotKspeaking of that view, do you think that should go away too?21:07
SotKI'm feeling currently like its a bad idea to have stories on there at least21:07
persiaI'm not sure there isn't a place for views of projects and project groups (if only to show project descriptions), but I think stories don't belong there.21:09
persiaFor clarity, I'm coming to this conclusion today: prior to thinking about things that might cause users to have an incorrect understanding of the data model, I was entirely in favour odf those views.21:10
SotKthat matches my current feeling21:11
SotKone thing that is concerning me is that I feel like the lack of something like https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/project/openstack-infra/storyboard or even https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/project/456 will be confusing and painful for folk coming from mostly anywhere21:13
SotKparticularly LP, where I think many people's workflow is to begin by going to something like https://launchpad.net/monasca21:14
SotKgoing off the prevalence of requests for being able to guess project URLs like that anyway21:14
persiaA page like that LP page would be useful.  Note that it doesn't contain a list of bugs or blueprints (other than short "latest" summaries)21:19
SotKyeah, I'm leaning towards thinking that the project page in sb should lose its story list and gain a link/button to the relevant browse URL21:21
persiaIn the case of OpenStack, I think a lot of that information exists in other places though, so don't think it belongs in SB.21:21
persiaAnd maybe a link to the project wiki page?21:22
SotKyep, it should grow some more content such as (perhaps) any project groups it is in, and any branches it has, and also links such as that (though maybe they belong in the description, which is in projects.yaml in OpenStack's case)21:23
SotKthe branches should link to a browse URL which contains stories affecting that branch of the project (not currently possible)21:24
persiaInteresting.21:24
persiaMind you, the more we go over this, the more exciting it becomes to consume things like project.yaml, which ends up making it less easy to put SB in other environments.21:25
SotKcurrently project metadata can be edited by admin users, so it'd be plausible to extend that support to any other things we contemplate obtaining from projects.yaml21:27
persiaAh, via some sort of script that had admin rights, and just populated metadata, rather than live query of git.openstack.org?21:28
persiaYes, that makes sense, and makes it easier for people not in OpenStack to track things like wiki links, IRC channels, project contacts, etc.21:28
SotKyeah, that is similar to how the integration currently works21:28
SotKI've also contemplated considering allowing teams to be given permission to modify project metadata (which is irrelevant to OpenStack, but that is a rabbit hole I'm not very confident I want to start down21:29
SotKsince there is some sense in linking a team to a project to me, it also makes some sense that the team for a project should be allowed to modify it21:29
SotK(where team here is equivalent to something like storyboard-core)21:30
SotKI think really I prefer the projects.yaml approach, but I dislike that people not using that rely on admins to modify project descriptions21:30
persiaI don't like the idea of linking projects to teams.  Too narrow a view of identity, and too much potential for useless datamining or gaming.21:41
SotKhm, how is it different to tracking project contacts?21:42
persiaKind of like the old core parties, which ended up being silly because long-time active contributors might not be invited, but new folk whose odd little project on the edge of things was approved yesterday did get invited: I blame those parties for the existence of some openstack projects (although now there is a stronger "why not do this in $foo" feature to project onboarding).21:43
persiaA single contact (might be a person, might be a mailing list) is useful in terms of being sure that someone peering about has an out-of-band way to reach folk.21:43
persiaA list of folks that are somehow special (whether implemented as a team or not) tends to accrete meaning, and have interesting side effects (including gaming).21:44
persiaWhereas groups, used strictly for permissions, become more flexible, as there is no approval process to create a group, anyone can have groups, and group membership devolves into the same sort of "does the admin like me" thing that pervades all of human behaviour.21:45
persiaSimply being a member of *any* group doesn't mean anything, and there is no "official" set of groups that mean anything.  Scraping group membership from SB then just becomes shorthand for delegating a decision to particular identified group admins.21:45
persiaWhich may be useful, but if done capriciously, can trivially be called into question as a valid means of selection, if anyone wants to call "unfair".21:46
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SotKmhmm, I think that is good enough reasoning to convince me :)21:54
SotKthough, such groups already exist in gerrit in the OpenStack case21:54
SotKI guess they have an approval process though21:54
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persiaIf the gerrit groups encompassed all the groups that needed to exist, I'd probably argue for import.  I believe there is additional benefit to groups like {People who report to Alice}, {People who get overly irritated when folk writing about a UI write "About it's name: its 'Bob'"}: I don't think those are in gerrit.22:23
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SotKyeah, I also don't think they are in gerrit22:29
SotKthat's an interesting point, currently storyboard teams can only be created by admin users, I wonder if that should change22:29
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Zaraneeds to be some check for cases like vmt22:30
Zara(am om phone hence shorthand)22:30
ZaraI think admin req is currently there bc simpler than per-team perms22:34
Zaraand some teams would need to not be editable by all22:35
Zara'only vmt can see this story' *adds self to vmt*22:36
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SotKon "project views", I was imagining something somewhat like https://codepen.io/StoK/full/PJBdzK/ (imagine without the redesigned UI, the easiest way to throw something together was to use the existing fake storyboard-ish thing I had)22:49
ZaraI think you just wanted to see that navbar again :)23:09
ZaraI like that idea though think that 'view stories' button is pretty easy to miss with that placement (ie: I missed it)23:10
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Zarawondering whether it's trying to expand scope for sb a bit too much, though maybe it depends on how the page is populated (aggregating info from elsewhere seems okay, but I worry a bit about things getting out of sync if people update manually)23:12
ZaraI guess I'm thinking that once that's there, people will want to expand it23:15
Zaraperhaps everything scraped + a box for misc. custom content that anyone can add to. Should that get abused, we could think about stricter perms.23:18
Zaraif it's too small for docs then that'd probably avoid the woorry that things would go up there that should not be ephemeral.23:19
Zarabut would hopefully offer a general solution to requests for specific fields.23:21
SotKyeah, I'm not certain where else the button would go and not look weird23:21
SotKbut I agree its kind of easy to miss23:22
Zara('our project team has a lucky cactus, could storyboard have a "lucky cactus" section?')23:22
Zara('could the "lucky cactus" section have status for whether the cactus needs watering or not?')23:22
SotKwell, everything on that page is entirely possible right now23:22
SotKi was envisioning it being populated from the project description field in projects.yaml, unless including bits of markdown in there would make folk sad23:23
SotKI dont think we should add any specific fields for things, that is the path to jira23:24
SotKcurrently only admins and the projects.yaml syncing can edit project descriptions23:25
Zarathat would be fine for me, mostly I want to be sure what scope is intended first because it'll be easier if we decide before we do anything :D23:27
ZaraI think the button for 'view stories' could probably just move a bit leftwards and even get a bit bigger, or go under the title23:28
Zaraor something else entirely, though if I get too carried away I'll be like "let's put it in a book saying 'view stories'!"23:29

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