Tor Browser Team Triaging Process

Here we document the processes we use for triaging problem reports and feature requests. This is a (roughly) daily process. Triaging currently covers three different channels. Tickets (new tickets and recently updated tickets), Blog comments, and IRC channels.

Tickets

Assigning Keywords and Priority

Review all tickets in the Applications/Tor Browser component that do not contain a TorBrowserTeam keyword (eventually, doc/TorBrowser#TorBrowserTicketsNeedingTriage: will provide those tickets). with Tickets are triaged into three categories, as well as subcategories depending on priority.

1. If this an an issue or feature we should solve/implement within the next two months?

• If it should be solved within the next month, then add the TorBrowserTeamYYYYMM keyword, where YYYYMM are the current year and month.
  • If this is a bug that violates either the privacy or security requirements in the [https://2019.www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/ Tor Browser Design], then set the ticket's priority as High.
  • Otherwise set the priority as Medium.
• If it should be solved "soon", but not necessarily this month, then set the TorBrowserTeamYYYYMM keyword for next month's and set the priority as Medium.
• If it should be solved at some time in the future, but not "soon", then set the TorBrowserTeamTriaged keyword. This includes tickets we should work on within the next 6-8 months as well as "wishful-thinking/pony" tickets, which we likely won't consider anytime soon unless we receive funding for it.

These are general guidelines. Two exceptions for this process are:

1. If we are near the end of the month, then we should be smart about whether we actually use the current month or simply put the ticket in next month's queue. - This is a little tricky because at the beginning of each month, we move tickets with last month's keyword into the new month. We should be careful that tickets are not accidentally de-prioritized as a result of this process.
2. If we know a ticket won't be worked on within the next two months, but we know it will like be worked on during a specific month in the future (for example, we know it should be on the roadmap in four months), then we should assign the correct TorBrowserTeamYYYYMM keyword now, and not using TorBrowserTeamTriaged.

If you do not know the severity/priority of a ticket, then simply add the tbb-triage-level2-needed keyword.

Comment Followup

When a ticket is opened or updated , but more information is needed, then add a comment asking for more information and set the status as needs_information.

When a ticket is in needs_information and more information is provided, then either reply and request even more information if it is needed or thank the user and set the status as new. Ask another member of the team if you don't know if a ticket contains enough information, or add the tbb-triage-level2-needed keyword.

Blog Comments

Review all comments on Tor Browser-related blog posts. Approve non-spam comments, delete spam comments. See (policy) for more details.

We create tickets for any comments which report a new issues, and reply to the comment with a link to the ticket. We reply to comments if there is a question to which we know the answer, otherwise we ask another team member to answer the question.

IRC

We should monitor #tor and #tor-project for people reporting problems/bugs, as well as feature requests.