I'm not sure how practical this is, but having an active issues tab right on the actual docs page could be very useful.

The way this might work is that the tab displays as "Issues (x)" meaning that if no issues have been reported against the page it displays "Issues (0)" or one issue would display "Issues (1)". Clicking on the tab shows the list of issues.

This would do a number of things.

  • It would let people know right away whether a problem they see has already been reported.
  • It would alert people to the possibility that the page is outdated, redundant etc.
  • It would encourage use of the issue queue to report problems.
  • It would help engage people in working on the issue queue in that they have arrived on a page that interests them and where they might have some expertise or insight and they see right away how they can contribute.

Comments

molemo’s picture

molemo commented

Hi Lee,

Would this be instead of or as well as the Page Status?

The reason I ask is that I have been trying to incorporate comments into pages, but I am not a drupal techie (yet) so am limited to which comments I can incorporate. There are lots of pages with technical comments that appear to be additions to code, corrections or variations, but the Page Status is "No known problems".

The Incorporating comments guidelines http://drupal.org/node/135589 say that in these cases I should "either test the code or verify the information yourself, contact the original author (whom you can identify under the revisions tab), or contact an authoritative source (e.g., the module maintainer) to ask them for clarification. "

I can't test or verify, so I need to contact the original author or the module maintainer. What should the Page Status be changed to? and Should it be logged as an issue at the same time?Found this page that describes what should happen to the page status and adding comments: http://drupal.org/node/1204360.

My thoughts are (and this gets back to your original idea) that it would be better to log a "comments need technical review/incorporation" issue that is automatically assigned to the original author - if they do not respond within 2 weeks(?) it is allocated to the module maintainer/an authoritative source by hand or remains an outstanding issue for the page to be picked up by the engaged knowledgeable person in your list.

Thanks

Morag

leehunter’s picture

leehunter commented

Yeah, that's an excellent question, re Page Status indicator.

It might very well make sense to replace the Page Status with the Issue tab (assuming that this Issue tab idea is even possible). I'm actually not a big fan of the Page Status flag to begin with, just because it seems so ambiguous and unreliable, whereas the proposed issue tab would be specific and explicit.

Like the comments, the page status flag seems to be yet another alternative to the issue queue. Changing the status doesn't push the page into the workflow and (even worse than the comments) doesn't, in itself, provide details as to what might be wrong with the page. I particularly don't like the status of "Insecure code". If that's the case, it should definitely go straight to the issue queue. As another example, if the page is set to "Needs Technical Review" and a competent person happens to review it, fixes any problems but doesn't reset the flag, we don't know that the page is now ok meaning that the next person to see the page might think that they should take the time and energy to review it too. This could still happen with an issue, but at least there's more of a chance that, if the reviewer is coming from the issue queue, they'll update the issue to "fixed" (I don't have any real data to back this up, but it seems that killing an issue is more satisfying than setting a flag on a random page).

I like the idea of a "comments need technical review" (at least, until we stop using comments) but I'm not sure about automatically assigning it to the original author. However, I've also proposed implementing the ability to allow users to subscribe to pages. What I would really really like is to get people to volunteer as technical reviewers for certain pages or sections using this theoretical subscribe feature. In that case, where they've self-identified as someone who wants to help maintain the content, it would totally make sense to automatically assign them to the issue.

leehunter’s picture

leehunter commented
Issue summary: View changes
Issue tags: +Usability
jhodgdon’s picture

jhodgdon
she/her
Primary language English
commented
Status: Active » Closed (duplicate)

This is actually a duplicate of #995292: Noderef field on issues for Documentation project, which had been closed as 'won't fix', but which I just reopened.