1484477 - (bmo-edit-comments) Allow users in editbugs group to edit comments

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(bugzilla.mozilla.org :: Administration, enhancement, P3)

Description

[IdmFoundInHim]

The functionality discussed in Bug #540 needs to be added to b.m.o (bugzilla.mozilla.org).  Although it may come with great difficulty, this would be a major improvement to the comment system on this website.  It would be best if comment editing was a native feature of Bugzilla, but any system-wide implementation of comment editing would suffice.

Comment 1

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

As :dylan mentioned in Bug 540, the functionality has already been added to BMO, but it’s only available to admins for now as per an administrative decision.

My thoughts:

* This is a common user request as my hearing from the DevTools team [1] also suggests
* Users have already been allowed to edit comments on Mozilla’s GitHub repositories 
* With the EditComments extension, editing history can also be displayed for transparency, though the current UI is not great

So I think Mozilla should change the decision to allow most users to edit comments.

[1] https://github.com/bugzilla/bugzilla-ux/wiki/Hearing-from-DevTools-team

Comment 2

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

If you want to be more restrictive, how about allowing vouched Mozillians instead of editbugs? There is not such a group at this time; it requires a bit of development: allow to connect Mozillian profile (Bug 935517) and use the API [1] to check if the user is vouched.

[1] https://mozillians.readthedocs.io/en/latest/api/apiv2/api-users.html

Comment 3

[IdmFoundInHim]

My original intent (which was unclear, I apologize) was to give every user the ability to edit (at least) only their own comments.  Could editcomments provide that ability?

I do not believe that enough people have editbugs or vouched Mozillian accounts to cover the following intentions:

*  Allow for the fixing of minor errors in comments
*  Allow for the expansion of stub comments
*  Allow for the improvement of low-quality comments/descriptions
*  Allow for the addition of relevant (troubleshooting) data associated with a past comment
*  Allow for comments to be modified slightly to fit a new objective (when a bug goes in a different direction)
*  Allow for the restructuring of comments to increase readability
*  Allow for the tweaking of hurried comments to provide a cleaner appearance
*  Allow for clarification (of descriptions, specifically) in a way that removes confusing info
*  Provide parity with the likes of Jira, GitHub, and many others

The above should not be reserved for only major contributors, as that discourages new users.  You would have to ask someone else to fix your spelling mistakes (because some of us do care that much).  Some BMO users are just passionate computer users with _some_ skills who would like to help develop some great open-source software.  I, personally, am not able to contribute enough right now to get editbugs.

Comment 4

[Dylan Hardison [:dylan] (he/him)]

Members of editbugs is a great proxy for this, as most active users end up having editbugs.

Comment 5

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

I’m happy to work on improving the UX later. Since the extension is already “working”, there should be no blocker for this; just a matter of admin policy.

Comment 6

[Dylan Hardison [:dylan] (he/him)]

there is a slight change, right now edit comments means you can edit *anyone's* comment.

Comment 7

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

There's two pieces to this: 

1. The policy discussion about editing comments, because we have a responsibility to make BMO inclusive

2. What needs to happen to enable editing comments. 

The first piece doesn't happen in that bug. Dylan, as BMO module owner, ultimately owns that decision and we need to find a place for that discussion in public and online. 

The second piece is technical, and can proceed in this bug once the first piece is resolved.

Comment 8

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

This bug has already discussed 1 so I'll file a bug for 2, which :dylan mentioned in Comment 6, under the Extensions: EditComments component.

Comment 9

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

The editable comment <textarea> is currently rendered in the Courier font, which doesn’t look good. So I’m adding Bug 1373420 as a blocker.

Comment 10

[Masatoshi Kimura [:emk]]

I think comment editing should be restricted to admin if bug 1373420 is fixed.

Comment 11

[IdmFoundInHim]

Emk, why would we restrict to admin if bug 1373420 if fixed?  Kohei was referencing the (current) situation in which admins _can_ edit comments, but there is a font issue while one is editing a comment.  This bug is about expanding certain editing permission to those with editbugs permissions.

Comment 12

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

:dylan can you check in on this thread and confirm as module owner so we have a record on it?

Comment 13

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

Here’s a summary of the proposed UX:

* Insiders (admins and people in the security group):
    * can edit any comment anytime on the bug page [1]
    * can see all revisions (edit history) of any comment
    * can hide a specific revision in case it contains sensitive info using a checkbox [2]

* Users in the “editbugs” group (employees and active contributors):
    * can edit their own comments anytime on the bug page [1] 
    * can see revisions of any comment, except for revisions hidden by an insider [3]
    * cannot hide any revision, even their own, so they still have to ask admins to hide sensitive info if any

* Users not in the “editbugs” group (new or inactive users):
    * cannot edit any comment, even their own
    * can see revisions of any comment, except for revisions hidden by an insider [3]
    * cannot hide any revision, even their own, so they still have to ask admins to hide sensitive info if any

[1] https://screenshots.firefox.com/WqC5RhA0S1KQmNyA/bmo-web.vm (the Hide This Revision checkbox is only visible to insiders)
[2] https://screenshots.firefox.com/K2QZYsVlfwvc5haS/bmo-web.vm
[3] https://screenshots.firefox.com/kPFKrKKs78X7ek6F/bmo-web.vm

Comment 14

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

It should also be noted that, unlike GitHub repositories, Bugzilla doesn’t have a per-product fine-grained membership concept*, so only these 3 group tiers will decide what users can(not) do.

*Except for the default CC and suggested reviewers, IIUC. In the future, I’d like to see such a concept to implement Kanban-style product dashboard and to reduce admin overload.

Comment 15

[Katherine Mancuso]

I haven't implemented an editing comment change before, but I see no issue with this as proposed in Comment 13. I would have some concerns if we were allowing editing outside the editbugs group.  

However, because I haven't implemented it before, I'm asking around in a community manager group to see if people who have made this change in other communities have specific things we should be aware of, and will let you know if I see anything that might be a risk.

Comment 16

[Caitlin Neiman [:caitmuenster]]

I also haven't implemented an editing comment change before and I think the proposal in comment 13 looks like an excellent place to start. :) Once this is implemented, I can report any problems that I see come up.

Comment 17

[Katherine Mancuso]

As an update I did ask around and the only additional suggestions that I got besides the options we considered was that we have a time period after which something can't be edited by anyone except admins.

I'm not sure if that's something that we have the technical capacity for or not, and I would consider it a "nice to have" rather than a necessary.

Comment 18

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

We actually discussed and WONTFIXed the potential timer-ish feature. See Bug 1144473.

Comment 19

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

Moving to P3 as this has been agreed to, but not begun.

Comment 20

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

The implementation baked in Bug 1484892 is now merged to master. Once it’s deployed, admin has to change edit_comments_group from can_edit_comments to editbugs. Then this is done!

Comment 21

[IdmFoundInHim]

Well, it works well (in pilot) at the moment.
It does seem to have some freeze-ups where pressing the pencil button won't let you actually edit the comment, but it is consistently fixed by refreshing the page.

Comment 22

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

(In reply to IdmFoundInHim from comment #21)
> Well, it works well (in pilot) at the moment.
> It does seem to have some freeze-ups where pressing the pencil button won't
> let you actually edit the comment, but it is consistently fixed by
> refreshing the page.

Yes, that's a known bug tracked in bug id=1510770. The work-around is to click on the edit bug button at the top of the bug before clicking the pencil. 

Thanks for testing out the feature!

Comment 23

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

This is now enabled by :dylan. An announcement is coming later. Happy editing!