Tickets should be Triaged for Difficulty and Labelled.

[npcole]

For discussion by Council: it might be helpful to create the following labels:

Difficulty:Low
Difficulty:Medium
Difficulty:High

To help with the triage process.

This should probably belong in a 'Meta' category -- which does not exist in this repo for some reason, but which does exist in Stylesheets.

[sydb]

[Note: I don’t really think this is a good idea, but I do think it is too cute not to post. If it were April Fools …]

Or, thinking instead along the lines of how skilled one should probably be to attack said ticket, and considering that many consider the Stylesheets essentially magic, we could use the levels of magic-user from Dungeons & Dragons (this list from AD&D):

1. Medium (or Prestidigitator)
2. Seer (or Evoker)
3. Conjurer
4. Theurgist (or Thaumaturgist)
5. Magician
6. Enchantress/Enchanter
7. Witch/Warlock
8. Sorceress/Sorcerer
9. Necromancer
10. Wizard/Archmaguse

Of which I would suggest we only use a few, probably avoiding the need for gender differences. Thus perhaps

1. seer (also reminiscent of the medical education motto “see one, do one, teach one”)
2. conjurer
3. magician
4. wizard

or some such.

[martindholmes]

I propose instead the Sebastian scale, from 0.1 Sebastians (anyone could do it) up to 1.0 Sebastians (no-one will ever be able to figure it out).

[sydb]

I like it! I like the idea of incorporating an honor to our late comrade and nod to his brilliance.

But I would prefer to call it the SPQR scale.

[dmj]

I understand the sentiment but would like to point out the a "Sebastian" or "SPQR" scale would be a complete inside reference, only understood by a particular generation and/or subgroup of the TEI community. I see a danger that establishing such a reference raises the barrier of future contributions.

Framing the discussion of effort estimates in terms of honor and comradery excludes individuals who do not share the tradition. I for myself did not meet Sebastian Rahtz. I don't have a feeling of comradery for him, what doesn't mean that I don't appreciate his work. Does this mean that I am not qualified to participate in an effort estimate or even this discussion? Is it disrespectful if I raise my concerns? How serious is the discussion? Is it an in-joke I don't get?

Regarding the initial proposal I think it lacks some kind of heuristic to classify issues in low, medium, or high difficulty. What came to my mind is the number of related issues. An issue of high difficulty is one that depends on or is a dependency of many other issues. An issue of low difficulty is one that effects only one information item.

[sydb]

You (@dmj) basically raise two issues — that the name is an in-joke that would cause problems, and that a single scale may lack the heuristics to properly indicate the degree of difficulty. Good points both, I think.

My first reaction on the first issue is basically “well, yes, if it’s not documented”. Certainly newly minted words, especially in-jokes, can be barriers; but they can also be useful handles and reminders. (Think, e.g., of “ODD” or “tagdoc”.) If we actually make and use such a label, it would certainly need to be documented.

My thoughts on the second are that you are absolutely right, there are at least two different axes of difficulty (how hard it is to make a particular change, and how co-dependent the rest of the codebase is on that change). But I am not sure we would want multiple axes explicitly expressed in the labelling system. (Others may disagree.) Might want to keep them in mind when developing a single axis of degree of difficulty, though.

One solution is to simply not use the “SPQR” idea. And that may be the right way to go, in the end. But another would be to wrap a snippet of documentation in with each label. Here is a first crack at what that might look like. I am sure we can improve upon the parenthetical commentaries.

• difficulty: 0.1 SPQR (e.g., fix a typo)
• difficulty: 0.2 SPQR (not changing any outputs)
• difficulty: 0.3 SPQR (e.g., moderate changes limited to 1 file)
• difficulty: 0.4 SPQR (e.g., minor changes across multiple files)
• difficulty: 0.5 SPQR (e.g., moderate changes across multiple files)
• difficulty: 0.6 SPQR (e.g., changes logic or precedence of template matching)
• difficulty: 0.7 SPQR (e.g., involves not just XSLT, but scripts or Guidelines, too)
• difficulty: 0.8 SPQR (extensive re-write in 1 file)
• difficulty: 0.9 SPQR (extensive re-write in multiple places)
• difficulty: 1.0 SPQR (may not be possible)

[martindholmes]

@dmj I'm sorry you never knew Sebastian. But I think a lighthearted way of acknowledging our debt to one of our greatest contributors does no harm, as long as it's clearly explained.

[npcole]

I'm sorry I never knew him too. I think I would have liked him a lot.

[sydb]

Council SVF2F sub-group thinks that this is a good idea, but not worth the effort. (It is just too hard to estimate difficulty, such that the labeling will be wrong half the time, anyway. Sigh.)