Bugzilla - how to report problems or suggest improvements
What is Bugzilla?
Bugzilla is an online platform you can use to report an IT infrastructure problem (for example with a website run by Wikimedia UK or your @wikimedia.org.uk email) or to suggest an idea for a way Wikimedia UK could improve its websites by updating content or creating or adding features you would like to see as a user.
Bugzilla was released as open source software in 1998, and it has been adopted by a variety of organizations for use as a bug tracking system for both free and open source software and proprietary projects and products. Bugzilla is used, among others, by Mozilla Foundation, Wikimedia Foundation, WebKit, NASA, Yahoo!, GNOME, KDE, Apache, Red Hat and Novell.
What I can use it for?
If you encounter an issue on and of Wikimedia UK's website (including the wiki, the blog, QRpedia, our stats tool, and the Wiki Loves Monuments UK website) Bugzilla is the place to report it. You need to register an account to file a 'bug report'. The Wikimedia UK developers will then try to fix the problem.
How to report a bug or request a feature?
The best kind of bug report includes a clear step-by-step account of what led up the problem.
Your ticket will be handled most of the time by a WMUK IT expert who might not have a clue about your context. For this reason, it's really important to be accurate in the way you describe your problem. The more information you can provide about a problem, the better. So for example there are options to tell the developers about the hardware you're using and the operating system. On top of this, it may be useful to include information such as which web browser you were using when your ran into the problem.
You should pay particular attention to answering the following questions clearly:
- What is your environment (operating system, browser, email software, etc.)?
- What is the step-by-step procedure to reproduce the problem?
- What do you obtain (a copy/paste of the error message or a screenshot is always useful)?
- In your opinion, what should be normal behaviour; how do you expect the service to work?
What will happen to my requests?
When creating a new bug you are asked to rate its 'severity'. The drop down menu gives you seven options:
- blocker
- critical
- major
- normal
- minor
- trivial
- enhancement
This tells the developers how your bug relates to the workflow of the component you're using. At one end of the scale a 'blocker' means that until the bug is fixed, other problems cannot be worked on, and an 'enhancement' means that the component works without the bug being addressed but that it would be an improvement.
Once the bug has been filed, another drop down menu appears with the options:
- highest
- high
- normal
- low
- lowest
This helps the developers prioritise which bugs are most important. A bug may be a 'blocker' for instance, but be considered to be of 'low' importance if it has a low impact. Similarly, a new feature to an existing tool might be considered an 'enhancement' but would make the tool much more useful to a large user base, meaning it could be considered more important. This particular menu is useful if the issue you are reporting is time sensitive.
Further ways to get involved
- Join the Technology Committee!
Where can I find it?
Wikimedia UK's Bugzilla is at bugzilla.wikimedia.org.uk
Tracker
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