You may've heard of Public JIRA aka our Issue Tracker. Before I continue, I'll preface this post, saying I'm familiar with all the common complaints. How could I possibly? Because they're the same ones I've had myself.

When I first started using the internal implementation of JIRA @ Linden Lab, it was spooky. Like ENIAC, one of those impregnable old-skool computers. It felt big and bulky, slow to tread through, and still does. But you know what? You either let the machine pwn your ass, or you kick it first. And that's exactly what I did — through sheer persistence and determination, I've become one of LL's most prolific and experienced JIRA users, and I wouldn't have gotten here without help from my fab fellow Lindens. I continue to ask questions to this day to learn more; for example, I recently checked with Rob Linden if Public JIRA issues entered by Lindens can automatically be imported internally, because there's a lot of duplication and things that need to be entered twice… bad redundancy!

OK then, so let me bring this up: I've heard many Residents say they want to know more about how our internal processes work, what we're actually doing with issues, so they can get a better "look under the hood". I get a lot of pleas for openness and transparency here. Understood — that's exactly why we have the Issue Tracker, which is a somewhat simplified version of our internal tracking system. Both run on Atlassian JIRA software (thanx to Mario for helping me out with quicksearch Q today!), and the internal one is at over 40,000+ issues, while the public one, PJIRA for short, just capped 1,000+, a usage surge prompted by recent Official Linden Blog posts and our recent Town Hall feat. Cory Linden which mentioned the Issue Tracker several times.

Unlike ever before, you're now empowered to go beyond reporting bugs (and feeling like they went into a black hole). You can find bugs others have filed, add info to existing ones, link related ones together, and so on and so forth. You're not at a loss to long-describe bugs like "That one where I teleport and hair ends up in my butt!", we've got issue #s — that one's VWR-374. Hence why it's an issue tracker.

So, now you can also see the complexity, the sheer overwhelmingness of what I look at on a daily basis. At least part of it. It helps give perspective. I listen to Resi complaints when they say "You Lindens don't know what it's like to live in our world!" which makes little sense to me worded like that, because we're in this together — we're all in Second Life. But the crux here, of course, is there are bugs encountered on a day-to-day basis that you won't really know about unless you get slammed by them again and AgAiN and AGAIN ARGHHHH! How do I know? Because it's happened to me, not hundreds, but thousands of times.

The converse is also true here. By opening up our procedures to Residents, we invite room for improvement (unlike the soon-to-be-obsoleted Feature Voting Tool, PJIRA lets Residents discuss and resolve each others' issues), as well as share some frustrations of our own. I'm frenzylicious about better tools, but I have to admit, after using JIRA so much, I'm a lot more comfortable with it, and that's true for just about anything with a learning curve. There are some basic bugs we'd like to solve — e.g., a smoother login process, or logging in from secondlife.com logs you into PJIRA and the SL Wiki too — would be nice.

But nevertheless, it's very eye-opening.

I love tools that bring complicated wizardry to the masses. Apple's iMovie is a great example. But in all the time I was researching better company and Resident-facing tools in the last few months, I didn't find a Web 2.0-friendly equivalent to Flickr in the support (Knowledge Base) and issue tracking depths. Good software can take time to mature too, or maybe there's a really big hole in the market someone oughta seize. I don't know.

But what I do know is as bad as it might seem for some, those people have obviously never seen the heinously crawling RT ticket tracking system (by Best Practical) we're weaning off of. Gosh, I got lost in that thing a lot. Or know that we used Bugzilla internally before JIRA.

With all of this comes a phase of acclimation. People get used to stuff. I know of many times when I was all SHOCKSHOCKHORRORAHHH! then calmed down weeks later, more confident in my ability to use a tool. And I can't ever emphasize being self-resourceful about help enough, which is why we've provided Issue Tracker instructions, and I think there's an unfolding opportunity for Residents to teach each other. Those who are easily frustrated-but-curious types (count me in!) would benefit greatly.

So, if you want to report some bugs, don't expect it to all work out on your first day. And that's alright. I made my share of fool's errors, but we don't start growups. We must learn to crawl before we walk… then run… then fly!

And if you have suggestions for bettering JIRA and making it easier based on your favorable experience with tools, by all means, file an issue within the Issue Tracker, or create a new Second Life Wiki page with tips, and ping me at torley at lindenlab dot com about it. Thanxies! :)