The Signpost

Technology report

The bugosphere, new mobile site and MediaWiki 1.18 close in on deployment

What is: the bugosphere?

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More articles

This week, bugmeister Mark Hershberger coined the term "bugosphere" to describe "the microcosm that evolves around a particular instance of Bugzilla" such as the MediaWiki Bugzilla. In this edition of What is?, we look at the processes and procedures underlying the Wikimedia bug reporting system (in Bugzilla terms, a 'bug' may be a problem with the existing software or a request for features to be added in future versions, which may also be referred to as an 'enhancement' when differentiation is desired).

Bug #1 was filed on 10 August 2004; as of time of writing, 30602 bugs have been submitted. Of those, approximately twenty-four thousand have been closed, whilst six thousand are still open (about 60 percent of which are requests for enhancements). Not all bugs related to Wikimedia wikis; the MediaWiki Bugzilla collates reports from all users of the software, in addition to bug reports that do not relate to MediaWiki but instead relate to Wikimedia websites. In any given week, approximately 90 bugs will be opened, and approximately 80 closed (in extraordinary weeks, such as bug sprints, as many as 65 extra bugs may be closed). As such, Bugzilla serves as central reference for monitoring what has been done, and what still needs doing.

Buggie, the Bugzilla mascot

Registration on Bugzilla is free but necessary (logins are not shared between Bugzilla and Wikimedia wikis for many reasons, including the increased visibility of email addresses on Bugzilla). Anyone may comment on bugs; comments are used principally to add details to bug reports, or suggestions on how they should be fixed. Voting in support of a bug is possible, but in general bugs are worked on by priority, or by area of expertise; few "critical"-rated bugs remain long enough to accumulate many votes. In January this year, the Foundation appointed Mark Hershberger as bugmeister, responsible for monitoring, prioritising and processing bug reports. More recently, he has been organising a series of "triages", when bugs are looked at and recategorised depending on their progress and severity. To file a bug or feature request, visit http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org, though it is usual to demonstrate a consensus before filing a request for a controversial feature or configuration change.

In brief

Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.


















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