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Liferay Community Programs

January 11, 2011 By James Falkner

Thanks to all of you, Liferay has an active and growing community that has made a lot of contributions in 2010.  However, with that growth comes inevitable growing pains!

One of the areas in which we have experienced continued pain is in the reporting, analysis, and resolution of tickets via Liferay's issue tracking system (based on Atlassian's JIRA).  The problem, as I've mentioned in the past, is that due to the sheer volume of tickets, sometimes tickets get lost in the noise.  In many cases, tickets that cause annoying bugs, yet are simple one-liner fixes, don't get resolved for months.  There are also existing tickets that have been in various stages of workflow, tickets that have a high community impact but have not been touched for months, or have been resolved as part of another fix, but are still open.  This should not happen!

With this in mind, I am announcing two new community initiatives that start today, focusing on community contributions to Liferay, and how you can help.  With these programs, it is my hope that the community will benefit in multiple ways:

  • Tickets are evaluated and resolved quicker
  • Users get important fixes faster, and with higher quality
  • Community Members that wish to "go above and beyond" can do so
  • Existing tools are used, so no real learning curve

1. One Hundred Paper Cuts


Szymon recently suggested that we should start our own program modelled after Ubuntu's "One Hundred Paper Cuts" program.  It's a simple, yet effective way for the community to reduce the backlog of "annoying" yet easy to fix bugs.  It will work like this:

  • Starting today we will have a 3-week time period in which to vote for bugs you feel should be fixed sooner rather than later.  Voting for Liferay bugs via JIRA helps the community prioritize tickets.  This is one of the easiest ways you can contribute to the betterment of the Liferay project.  Vote counts are also used when determining what goes into new releases.  For example, for the next Community Edition, those bugs with higher votes will be included.  Every community member gets 1 vote per issue.  To vote, you must be logged into issues.liferay.com.  Don't have an account?  Register for free.  Here's a search showing the top community-voted issues as of now.
  • After the 3 week voting period, the top 10 "annoying yet easy to fix" tickets will be chosen, and assigned to community members who are participating in the project, in the form of a 2-week "community sprint" to get these issues resolved (into the "Community Resolved" state).
  • After those 2 weeks are up, repeat the process.  The time taken to vote and/or fix issues will be tuned based on performance on the first sprint.

If you want to participate, leave your desires in the comments section below. 

Aside from being recognized as a valued and active community member participating in the program, there will be prizes as well :)

 

2. Community Leadership Program

 

You've been working with Liferay for a couple of years now, and have contributed many fixes and are active on the forums, and have a genuine desire to see the Liferay community grow and prosper.  You may even have ideas on how to fix certain parts of the community.  What better way to recognize your achievements than being part of the Community Leadership Program!  This new program promotes and rewards key community individuals who have  demonstrated such qualities, and gives them additional privileges (and also responsibilities) for helping guide and manage the community.

One of the first actions for members of this program will be in JIRA, as a Community Verifier. Historically, community members have had limited permissions in our issue tracking system.  Members can create and comment on issues, and submitters may mark their bugs as "Contributed Solution" or "Community Resolved".  Sometimes issues go to this state, and rot over time.  Many of these issues have been resolved (esp. in the Liferay 6 release), but haven't been updated.  Some issues are still real issues, or are only partially resolved.  Some issues simply aren't issues at all!  We need leaders who can help us work through this backlog, and are willing to learn and teach the wider community how to properly mark issues, including which releases it is applicable to, which component it affects, or declaring a bug is not a bug so that it can be closed or otherwise resolved.

Over the coming weeks and months, additional roles and responsibilities will be defined as part of this program. With your help and mentorship, we can improve the quality of not only the project, but of the community as well. If you are interested in participating in this program, leave a comment below!

5522 Views, 39 Comments

Showing 39 Comments

Puj Z
Puj Z
1/11/11 3:26 PM

great idea James!
by the way, when is the date of the next patch for lp6EE and/or the next liferay 6x release? Is there any timeline/roadmap for it?

Szymon Gołębiewski
Szymon Gołębiewski
1/11/11 3:40 PM

100 Paper Cuts
1. If anyone doesn't have "Votes" column just enter "Configure your Issue Navigator" and add it.
2. Can we vote for any issue or are they limited to creation date, *Liferay version*, status, priority or something? emoticon
3. "the top 10 "annoying yet easy to fix" tickets will be chosen," As we can vote for any issue who will decide which one is easy to fix? What if the first on the list issue is not so easy to fix - will it loose all their votes (votes will be equal to 0)?
4. "...and assigned to community members who are participating in the project...". I hope some of them will be also assigned to Liferay Inc. developers too. It will be a good example to follow emoticon
5. When do we start?

Community Leadership Program
Count me in!

Tobias Käfer
Tobias Käfer
1/11/11 11:06 PM

That's really great news!
I am getting the impression, that you guys are really willing to change things, that got annoying during the "hard times" after the 5.2.3 was released and almost nothing happend for a year (from my point of view).

If you need me for that "Community Leadership Program", I'll me there.

Milan Jaroš
Milan Jaroš
1/12/11 12:27 AM

Thanks for your initiative! I have a question. You have posted search for LPS issues but what about LEP issues? E.g. LEP-1266... ;)

Rafał Piotrowski
Rafał Piotrowski
1/12/11 12:37 AM

"One Hundred Paper Cuts"

I do know code of Liferay very much, but you can count on me. I can try :-)

Juan Fernández
Juan Fernández
1/12/11 12:56 AM

@James: amazing reading about this!! Keep on like that! emoticon
@Milan: LEP are old LPS, so it make sense that they are included in this process

Milan Jaroš
Milan Jaroš
1/12/11 1:20 AM

Unfortunately it seems they are not included. "Top Community Issues" view does not contain any LEP. :-/

Juan Fernández
Juan Fernández
1/12/11 1:21 AM

That is just a filter. I guess we can update it so that it includes LPE tickets. James?

(By the way, I've closed the ticket you mentioned before: we have already implemented it)

Yousri BENDIABDALLAH
Yousri BENDIABDALLAH
1/12/11 1:27 AM

I'm interested in Community Leadership Program, very good initiative!

Milan Jaroš
Milan Jaroš
1/12/11 1:41 AM

Thanks Juan, I've received e-mail. This is the case too - there are many open issues which has been implemented already. emoticon

Best

Juan Fernández
Juan Fernández
1/12/11 1:42 AM

See? Just pointing us to a concrete ticket, you've helped us to close that ticket that were opened for a long time. That is the goal of involving the community in the process.
Thanks! emoticon

Szymon Gołębiewski
Szymon Gołębiewski
1/12/11 1:46 AM

Which also means no one at Liferay looks at old tickets ;) Very naughty :]

Juan Fernández
Juan Fernández
1/12/11 1:48 AM

No Szymon, it doesn't means that. We DO look at old tickets, It's just a matter of amount of tickets. It's quite easy for a ticket to get lost in the mountain of tickets, so if you are interested in a concrete ticket, it's ok to call for our attention over it. That's what this program is about

Milan Jaroš
Milan Jaroš
1/12/11 1:53 AM

Agree! And that's why I see great potential in it. I like this idea. B-)

Deb Troxel
Deb Troxel
1/12/11 8:53 AM

100 Cuts

Sounds like a great opportunity for more community members to make a contribution. Please count me in as willing to participate.

James Falkner
James Falkner
1/12/11 9:03 AM

Awesome, thanks for all the volunteers! I am working on updating the JIRA wiki page to document all those oddball fields that many don't know what they mean. Then onto a Roadmap wiki update in prep for next week's Liferay Live community preso. Please continue to vote for your favorite bugs at issues.liferay.com. In a couple of days I'll summarize who's participating in both programs and we can discuss from there..

James Falkner
James Falkner
1/12/11 9:07 AM

Done! http://issues.liferay.com/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?requestId=12261

Jonas Yuan
Jonas Yuan
1/12/11 9:52 AM

Great idea! Thanks, James.

James Falkner
James Falkner
1/12/11 12:00 PM

1. Yeah, what he said emoticon
2. Any open issue can be voted on.
3. I will pick the initial 10, based on the available information in the ticket. When there is a question on "how easy", I will consult with community developers. My hope is that most of them will be obvious fixes. I hope emoticon
4. Well, this one is not so easy - there is an established workflow for Liferay staff engineers where issues are first chosen for a given sprint during a meeting (we are agile and all), and then assigned. This program is not meant to circumvent that emoticon
5. Voting starts today, ends in 3 weeks, then we start assigning 1 or 2 bugs to participants from the "list of 10". Those that don't get fixed in 2 weeks are rolled over.

James Falkner
James Falkner
1/12/11 12:23 PM

I updated the JIRA wiki page with a bunch more information regarding the various fields, and instructions on how to configre JIRA to see votes, etc.

http://www.liferay.com/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/JIRA

Szymon Gołębiewski
Szymon Gołębiewski
1/12/11 1:09 PM

2. Even those that are assigned to LR 5.1 like LEP-7058?
6. Should Community Contributors prepare patches for LR version that are mentioned in issues or should they always prepare patches for trunk?
7. There are ticket that will be fixed by Liferay during normal operation like LPS-5906 (assigned for Januray sprint). Can you somehow exclude such tickets from our voting list in JIRA?

Juan Gonzalez P
Juan Gonzalez P
1/12/11 2:48 PM

I would like to contribute in whatever I could on this!

Arcko Duan
Arcko Duan
1/12/11 8:34 PM

Good start, keep go on!

Boubker TAGNAOUTI
Boubker TAGNAOUTI
1/13/11 12:42 AM

Good initiative.
You have my votes and my participation to this program!

Corné Aussems
Corné Aussems
1/13/11 12:53 AM

Yet another great initiative from James !!
Where have you been all these years? emoticon
and thx to Szymon of course.
Somewhere in the next months i hope i will have my hands free to participate.

Jorge Ferrer
Jorge Ferrer
1/14/11 9:18 AM

Thanks a lot for running this and making it happen so fast James!!

And even more thanks to all of you who have already volunteered to contribute, it's very energizing to see so many people participating emoticon

James Falkner
James Falkner
1/17/11 2:02 PM

Just a followup: I am working on creating the home page for the programs. I have the following volunteers so far:

100 PC
------
Szymon Gołębiewski
Rafał Piotrowski
Milan Jaroš
Deb Troxel
Juan Gonzalez P
Boubker TAGNAOUTI
Corné Aussems

Leadership
----------
Szymon Gołębiewski
Tobias S. Käfer
Yousri B
Juan Gonzalez P
Boubker TAGNAOUTI
Corné Aussems

Responses to your questions:

2. Yeah, any open bug can be voted on. Of course, for the community sprints, we will concentrate on those that only affect the most recent CE release (6.0.5 and soon 6.0.6) - because the community will only see fixes for those in the next CE release. We don't produce CE releases for 5.1 anymore, but you can still vote for them.
6. They should always prepare patches for trunk. The presumption is that the 100 PC program will only work on fixes for the "next" CE releases, which are taken from trunk.
7. Those will be excluded when we choose which bugs to work on. We'll only work on issues that are not currently assigned to LR staff. You can vote for them, but they will not participate in the 100 PC program (but it is still useful to vote on such issues, for the more general goal of getting more visibility to your "favorite" issues).

Tomáš Polešovský
Tomáš Polešovský
1/17/11 2:32 PM

James - great effort, I've never realized community needs man like you!

If you find me useful I try to help you too.

Corné Aussems
Corné Aussems
1/19/11 12:38 AM

The voting is unfair and rigged emoticon
For some issues i can't vote.
For some reason i cant vote for this post.
It stays on "Vote for it"
http://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-4233

James Falkner
James Falkner
1/19/11 5:08 AM

Odd... I can't vote for it either! Dirty politics.. election rigging. I demand a recount!! (I do live in Florida after all). I'll do some investigation.

James Falkner
James Falkner
1/19/11 6:04 AM

I added additional thoughts and discussion on the 100PC program here: http://www.liferay.com/community/forums/-/message_boards/message/7143349

James Falkner
James Falkner
1/19/11 8:17 AM

Cynthia graciously cloned the ticket and deleted the original. We don't know why it failed, but it's likely fixed in the latest version of JIRA to which we are upgrading. The new ticket is:

http://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-14858

Baptiste Grenier
Baptiste Grenier
1/20/11 12:25 AM

Hi,
Nice, I am willing to try to see if I can help emoticon

Edward Shin
Edward Shin
1/20/11 10:21 AM

This is an awesome post! Thanks James!

Puj Z
Puj Z
1/25/11 6:47 AM

James,

I have an idea regarding improvement the usability in liferay.
Why not ask the community, what are the most annoying things they experience in using liferay. These points are not necessarily bugs, but rather small things that irritate users.
As an example from my side, I find it disturbing to receive a notification email when I, myself, post something in the forum or write a comment. It might be a simple "if-then-else" line when sending the notification email, but no one -including myself- is not willing to report it as an issue.

Cheers!

Juan Fernández
Juan Fernández
1/25/11 7:04 AM

Good idea, Puj Z!

I think that can be one of the next community programs we can start. Something like "100 usability paper cuts" (ideas for the name also accepted emoticon).

It's true that there are many things that you as Liferay users can propose and we the developers don't realize, so I agree we should do this.

About your complaints related to the notifications, just fyi, we have reimplemented the whole notifications system in Liferay 6.1 and now we have had it into account: issue fixed! emoticon

Thanks for your feedback!

James Falkner
James Falkner
1/25/11 8:23 AM

Excellent idea -- something along the lines of a usability audit, but informal and community-based. I like it. I'll get that one started as soon as we get the 100PC off the ground!

Hitesh Methani
Hitesh Methani
2/1/11 10:28 PM

I would like to contribute in whatever I could on this! emoticon

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