Hey everyone!
We here at Wild Me are working very hard to make sure we are serving you as best we can. With that come some process updates: we have to start thinking at scale because there are so many of you leveraging Wildbooks that we can’t keep up!
Going forward, we are going to ask that bug reports get posted here, in the Wildbook Community. This has a number of benefits for you:
- There is zero chance of your report getting lost in an inbox on a busy day
- You will be able to search for other reports and comment that you are experiencing the issue as well
- If an issue has already been accepted with a planned timeline, you’ll be able to see that on the initial reporting and can watch the post for any updates from us
And there are benefits for us:
- We have a public record of what we’ve agreed to fix and by when, making us a bit better at holding ourselves accountable
- We have a public way to communicate to anyone experiencing the issue, so we’re reducing repeated effort
- We have a public way to gather information from different angles so we can more easily identify where in our code the issue is stemming from
The process
- Report the issue here. Use the template at the end of this post for guidance on what to provide.
- We determine how to reproduce the issue and confirm it’s a bug
- We create a ticket for the bug and give you the number for tracking purposes. We will also provide a classification of severity and how that impacts the timeline of when the bug will be resolved
- We post once we have resolved the issue
- We put the reference number in the next release notes with the fix
Bug severity classifications
Critical bugs are bugs that we will fix immediately and ask you to partner with us in testing to ensure that it’s fully resolved. The following cases are classified as critical bugs:
- If it’s blocking you from doing your job
- If it’s a security risk
- If it has the potential of data loss
Severe bugs are weighed heavily and will be resolved as quickly as possible without interrupting the current dev cycle. These are the highest priority tasks other than in-flight feature development work. The following cases are classified as severe bugs:
- If there is a workaround, but it requires a lot of overhead
- If the issue is intermittent
- If the issue prevents a feature from working, but the feature has low usage
Moderate bugs will be considered during our regular cadence work. The are prioritized after feature commitments that are in-flight, but will be considered before beginning any new major work. The following cases are classified as moderate bugs:
- If there is a workaround that doesn’t require a lot of overhead
- If the issue is a matter of confusing design, but the work can be completed
Cosmetic bugs are considered in line with other work being completed. These will rarely be a separate development effort, but instead folded into work that touched the area of the frontend that shows the issue. The following cases are classified as moderate bugs:
- Images not loading
- Typos
- Misaligned text or fields
Concerns with this process that you’re probably having right now
This feels less personal and like my issue will get lost in the void.
Our number one goal to serve you better. This is our first step towards making a more sustainable, scalable process and give you additional resources to rely on so you aren’t waiting on us.
If you report a bug and feel that the process isn’t working, please talk to us. We are going to iterate on this and make sure that it’s the best service we can provide to all of our customers, but we won’t know what to fix without your feedback.
Template for bug report submission
When using the template below, you can include image, csv, or xlsx files. If you are uncomfortable sharing the data publicly, send the file to info@wildme.org.
In which Wildbook did the issue occur?
What operating system were you using? (eg. MacOS 10.15.3)
What web browser were you using? (eg. Chrome 79)
What is your role on the site? (admin, researcher, etc)
What happened?
What did you expect to happen?
What are some steps we could take to reproduce the issue?