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Meta Server Fault has been ignored by the devs as far as design bugs are concerned:

Is there any formal process to report, track bugs originating at site-specific metas and communicate their resolution to Stack Exchange users? 'Cause if there is, it is uneven, not transparent and frankly speaking fails the Joel test (#4 and #5). At one end, we have Mr.Rahjerdi's fantastically prompt response to Android app bugreps. At the other end of the scale - well, a design bugrep sitting without acknowledgement since March this year is rather abysmal.

I would propose inserting links to internal ticket numbers in devs' comments acknowledging bug reports, but this is mostly a non-technical problem. No amount of technology can solve it, am afraid, without changes to SOP (standard operating procedures).

Related: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/253409/204631

"Additionally, the community managers do monitor feature requests on all meta sites, so they will see such requests and act on them (assuming the community comes to a consensus)."

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    There are 1813 non-answered bugs, the oldest from august 2009 and that is only on MSE. Among the open bugs there are for sure some that are even more abysmal than some design bug. Just to put all this a little bit in perspective.
    – rene
    Jul 11, 2015 at 20:58
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    @rene - oh sh. This is indeed a perspective I haven't considered. Thank you for putting things in context.
    – Deer Hunter
    Jul 11, 2015 at 21:07
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    They have a network-wide view of things tagged bug, so they don't monitor the metas individually. I don't know how the design team fits into that process, though.
    – Tim Stone
    Jul 11, 2015 at 21:20
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    @TimStone I assume that is this view.
    – rene
    Jul 11, 2015 at 21:26
  • The design team has been somewhat slow to respond to design bugs even posted on MSE. Sounds like they have a huge backlog of work.
    – Troyen
    Jul 12, 2015 at 4:08
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    @Troyen - "No new features before bugs are fixed" - another point of Joel's.
    – Deer Hunter
    Jul 12, 2015 at 8:09
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    Excellent question. You're definitely not the only site whose bug reports and support requests are largely ignored by the only people who could say anything about it. In some cases (if you're "lucky" and it doesn't only pertain to a single site) you can just go up to the main meta. But well, even that doesn't really mean your request gets noticed, let alone responded to. Sometimes a simple "oh, we noticed that" message would already be enough to know that the whole thing isn't entirely dropped into oblivion, but well.
    – Christian Rau
    Jul 13, 2015 at 0:59

1 Answer 1

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There are two questions here...

  1. Developers constantly monitor bugs network-wide. As changes are made, the developer(s) responsible will watch for reports of problems that weren't caught during internal testing, and implement fixes. Additionally, each week someone is assigned to the backlog; they'll review bugs new and old, fixing those they are able to. The backlog is... long... and many bugs do not seriously affect the day-to-day operation of the sites. Therefore, efforts are focused on defects that are most severe, followed by those that can be corrected easily.

  2. Designers monitor design bugs across various sites as well; however, the size of the design team is insufficient for the amount of work; most of their time is consumed on new design work. When time allows, they have been slowly chipping away at the most severe bugs, as well as working to pay down technical debt - but there's a lot of work left to do. If, by chance, you happen to know a designer whose talents match the work being done here and who would be interested in contributing their talents to these efforts, please let them know that we're hiring!

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  • I'll help if Jin agrees to take me to some of his fancy food restaurants
    – Tim Stone
    Jul 12, 2015 at 21:25
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    Would it be an idea to have a bugzilla's style tracking system for bug ?
    – user276487
    Jul 14, 2015 at 12:56
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    @yagmoth555 - like heh, FogBugz?
    – Deer Hunter
    Jul 15, 2015 at 9:21
  • Not really, @yagmoth555; the problem isn't usually that we can't find the bugs.
    – Shog9
    Aug 18, 2015 at 17:39
  • yea, but a tracking system allow more. to see the bug's queue list to get fix and the the priority on each task. as it's looking right now, everyone can report back know bug, it's lost energy for your staff in the end.
    – user276487
    Aug 18, 2015 at 17:50
  • Only if someone adds a priority, @yagmoth555. In my experience, such priorities are fanciful at best, and most often completely arbitrary. Votes on meta sites are at least based on something other than the momentary impulse of whichever dev drew the short straw.
    – Shog9
    Aug 18, 2015 at 17:52
  • You told me that someone with a botnet could manipulate meta priority ? but my point was more at first, that in that thread in the question, the first bug was reported by me, but I had no way to find if it was already reported or not and without a dev answer I have no idea if no one simply care. So yes involving the community is great, but at some point like DeerHunter told a simple post that told, 'we check the bug' does not hurt. with over 1800 bugs, I understand it's hard on the other side. In perspective it just look bad.
    – user276487
    Aug 18, 2015 at 23:54
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    Search is what we all use, @yagmoth555. If you don't find a report searching, then your report will be there for the benefit of the next person to encounter the bug, OR a dev looking to fix it.
    – Shog9
    Aug 19, 2015 at 0:44
  • Good point. To help, like if I want to resolve the design flaw I seen, is it open only to employees, or like a public github exist ?
    – user276487
    Aug 19, 2015 at 3:13

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