Github issue labels

[samiebee43]

Using this post to try out GH discussions and to talk about issue labels.

Issue labels are very helpful for deciding which issue to work on next. Our labels are close to the defaults, but it seems to me that our issues fall into very distinct categories that don't match 1-to-1 with our existing labels. Using this discussion lets figure out what labels we want to use and what to name them. So far here's what I've identified. Not married to the titles of these categories.

• Fully Broken: Something is broken that was necessary for a userflow. There is no reasonable alternative.
  Ex: Enlighten CSV loader is broken in 4.0.x #111
  This is a 'drop everything and fix' situation

• Must build: New features that are very important
  Ex: LocalBaseline development #132

• Semi Broken: Something is broken, but there's a guessable alternative or path through.
  Ex: Cloud download doesn't work from Windows binary #147, or an issue with save to CSV (can be done from within scope graph)
  Still high priority

• Not quite right: The way it functions is not sensible, but it doesn't block or slow down the user. It's just distracting or weird.
  Ex: Illustrations persist on disabled plugin #141

• There's a better way: The contention is on a programmatic side, pretty much invisible to the user. Needless to say, these can still be very important because of how it affects organization, development, and future functionality.
  Ex: RamanShiftCorrectionFeature find_peaks FWHM #133

• Refinement: Aiming to optimize some qualifying metric (same as previous?)
  Ex: Batch Collection measurement times drift over several hours #106

• Visual Bug: Something's wrong with GUI rendering
  Ex: UI Font sometimes very small #100, Plugin execution msgbox shows dark in light mode #99

• Arch Wishlist: Architectural changes that would improve life (but probably have overhead cost)
  Ex: Upgrading GUI framework #89

• Wishlist: New features that would be cool
  Ex: In-app shortcut cheatsheet #109

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One purpose of this is to enable filtering/notifications for the very high priority labels such as 'Fully Broken' and 'Must Build'.

Also, notice that "Wishlist" and "Must Build" are both currently just Enhancement's even though they represent opposite sides of the priority spectrum.

[samiebee43]

I do want to keep the existing label: plugins

I want to remove or rename most of the other ones, because they are either umbrella terms for the labels above or we don't use them.

Accessibility would be nice to keep, but it's really just a subset of "Visual Bug / GUI" and I don't think we have enough of those to justify differing tiers of priority.

[mzieg]

I guess my only request would be that some level of quantifiable priority be built into the labels as not everyone may subjectively infer the listed order. Maybe include "1 - Fully Broken" to "9 - Wishlist", and/or color-code from red to blue?

[samiebee43]

Yes, I like that idea. I'm thinking both numbered labels and perhaps a red-yellow-green color code?

[samiebee43]

Here's one evolution - using one word labels with numbers and a wide severity-color gamut.
Numbered label are one per issue. Additional categorizing labels are tones of a preselected neutral color. In this case purple.

Here's a variant that uses teal as the neutral color and white as the low severity color.

One pro of this is that it's using an already fairly ubiquitous color-to-severity scheme.
One con is that this whole thing is only barely not a waste of time :) (only joking, distinguishing between wishlist and category 0,1,2 issues will make triaging much easier for me)

I'll put my vote on teal for neutral

[samiebee43]

ps when you hover over labels a one sentence description is displayed

[mzieg]

This was not a waste of time. It was a good addition.