Since I have decided to blog for a bit, I want to talk about the pJira (aka public Jira). From the wiki, the name Jira is apparently a play on the Japanese word for Godzilla. Why Gozilla? Well, there was bugzilla. Yes, we techno-dweebs have a nasty habit of picking the most inane names for our pet projects. Nonetheless, this post is not about the history of the JIRA, whether or not it is a decent bug tracking system, etcetera. Rather, it is about the way the Jira is being used by Linden Lab.

Linden Lab has two Jiras actually—one for internal use and the other for resident bug reporting and feature requests. The external Jira is referred to as the pJira. The process is fairly straight forward. Residents can create new issues and/or comment and vote on existing issues. At first glance, one might even think the pJira is great.

Well… perhaps not.

Residents can also reclassify and close issues that they do not own. And, if you, as a resident disagree and reopen and/or reclassify “your” issue, you stand the very real chance of facing temporary or even permanent banning.

Which brings me to the next bit…

There also appears to be some sort of pecking order that, amazingly (or perhaps not so), includes technical incompetents basically running roughshod over other residents, while engaging in appalling ad hominem that extends well beyond the pJira definition. One such incident that comes to mind is the recent perma-banning of Prokofy Neva.

Prok opened an issue regarding group share and the ability for any group member to return an object that was shared, even if they were not slated to do so in the group provisions. Although the issue was opened in March 2008, I did not happen upon this issue until May of this year.

At Prok’s invitation however I joined he and others to re-create the reported bug, and then responded to that particular thread. Shortly thereafter, Soft Linden decided to close the issue, claiming it had been resolved. Prok reopened the issue, pointing out that it was, indeed, not resolved, and Soft Linden closed it again. After a couple of rounds of the “is too” / “is not” posts, Prok was banned for ten days.

In the mean time, I reopened the issue.

Interestingly, I received several IMs from people explaining why I should not have reopened it. Not one of which addressed the issue being discussed or why they felt my opinion was mistaken. Rather, the comments involved what these individuals did not like about Prok.

Excuse me? Why oh why are these individuals turning the pJira into a popularity contest? Such nonsense renders it absolutely useless.

Of course, they closed the issue again along with a warning to “not reopen.”

I must admit. I am very institutionalized when it comes to the technology industry. So, rather than reopening the issue, I politely asked about starting a new issue and lifting Prok’s ban.

The response I received was, “Anybody can reopen the issue.”

So I did. Even though I already knew it was waste of time. In any event, I was looking for some distraction and was admittedly curious to learn if these people were even remotely interested in the issue being discussed.

I also decided to attened Andrew Linden’s office hours to ask him specifically about about VWR-5491. Here is an excerpt of his response.

[11:29] Angela Talamasca: Andrew, have you had any time to look into VWR-5491? Although that was originally posted as a viewer bug, i hold that the problem spans both server and client side.

[11:30] Andrew Linden: Angela, I was talking about that bug earlier. I did try to read it

[11:30] Andrew Linden: It looks like there is a real bug or design flaw there. Yes it would require a server-side fix.

[11:30] Angela Talamasca: i did try to outline the issue to better clarify it.

[11:31] Andrew Linden: Ah yes Angela, actually thank you very much for your comments. Yours were the ones I was reading that helped me actually understand what was being talked about.

So, the lead server developer also recognizes this problem. Not that [that] was any surprise.

As for the pJira power strokers eventually getting a clue or two or ten? That was sadly not to be, and they eventually closed the thread again as well as posting a glaring statement at the top of the thread that this particular issue has been deemed “dead.”

Do these people actually believe they can make a bug go *pewf* by simply claiming it is a dead issue in bold red caps? Or was that statement not unlike a dog marking its territory?

If the former, then these individuals have exhibited a degree of incompetence that challenges the imagination. If the latter, then, regardless of their intention, one message has been made clear: The pJira is nothing more than a macabre circle jerk as opposed to place to investigate legitimate bugs. If you want real solutions, please look elsewhere.