RE: What requires a HOLD vote on the Parts Tracker
2017-12-09, 14:31 (This post was last modified: 2017-12-09, 14:51 by Santeri Piippo.)
2017-12-09, 14:31 (This post was last modified: 2017-12-09, 14:51 by Santeri Piippo.)
I generally ask myself: is it necessary to fix the problem to release the part? If a wrong color is used, it will affect the end user a lot more than a missing contour. Concave quadrilaterals can cause misinterpretations by software so those, of course, must be fixed. A BFC error can cause potentially major rendering issues so those should always net a hold vote. A t-junction, that might cause some minor rendering artifacts and I try to avoid them in my work but I don't see why it should necessitate a hold vote. Or minor gaps or bleed-ins that generally are not visible unless you take a very close look at it.
I think that we often find problems (such as t-junctions) that would be nice to fix but shouldn't cause problems in by far most use cases. Currently these get a hold vote or, like Philo said, we keep back our certify votes for. The only current alternative is, right now, to put a "(Needs work)" qualifier which to me carries the connotation that the part requires major rework and we generally don't use it for simple problems.
We should keep in mind that generally people want these parts to build models with, and models have a scale much larger than what we as parts authors deal with. Our scale is 0.1 - 100 LDU or so in most cases; for models, 100 LDU is just the length of a 5 stud brick!
So perhaps we need better a platform for that? Maybe a list of issues (like a bug tracker of sorts) somewhere on the PT which would list parts that are released with issues, minor or major. Major issues are those that we currently apply the "(Needs work)" treatment to. Minor issues would then be ones that we can fix in a future update. Then we would have less issues to raise a hold vote for, or to keep back a certify for. Instead, release and put a note down that we should fix this later. This will probably create a backlog of things to deal with but that would still be better than a hundred parts held back for minor issues that aren't getting updates for years to come. Prioritize.
Perhaps there could also a third category for things that would be nice but what aren't realistic to deal with right away?
(nth) Edit: I also thought that a major part of the problem seems to be that when the part is released, it disappears from the parts tracker and needs to be re-submitted to it to be edited again, losing comment history in the process. So our only options are to release or keep it on the PT. I think that these shouldn't be mutually exclusive. A part with non-showstopper issues could be both released and kept on the PT for rework. A part with major issues can be released with a Needs Work modifier. Why does releasing a part remove it from the PT entirely anyway instead of just archiving it?
I think that we often find problems (such as t-junctions) that would be nice to fix but shouldn't cause problems in by far most use cases. Currently these get a hold vote or, like Philo said, we keep back our certify votes for. The only current alternative is, right now, to put a "(Needs work)" qualifier which to me carries the connotation that the part requires major rework and we generally don't use it for simple problems.
We should keep in mind that generally people want these parts to build models with, and models have a scale much larger than what we as parts authors deal with. Our scale is 0.1 - 100 LDU or so in most cases; for models, 100 LDU is just the length of a 5 stud brick!
So perhaps we need better a platform for that? Maybe a list of issues (like a bug tracker of sorts) somewhere on the PT which would list parts that are released with issues, minor or major. Major issues are those that we currently apply the "(Needs work)" treatment to. Minor issues would then be ones that we can fix in a future update. Then we would have less issues to raise a hold vote for, or to keep back a certify for. Instead, release and put a note down that we should fix this later. This will probably create a backlog of things to deal with but that would still be better than a hundred parts held back for minor issues that aren't getting updates for years to come. Prioritize.
Perhaps there could also a third category for things that would be nice but what aren't realistic to deal with right away?
(nth) Edit: I also thought that a major part of the problem seems to be that when the part is released, it disappears from the parts tracker and needs to be re-submitted to it to be edited again, losing comment history in the process. So our only options are to release or keep it on the PT. I think that these shouldn't be mutually exclusive. A part with non-showstopper issues could be both released and kept on the PT for rework. A part with major issues can be released with a Needs Work modifier. Why does releasing a part remove it from the PT entirely anyway instead of just archiving it?