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Bug 456647

Summary: [pmi] Commit activity line graph emphasizes activity trends over absolute activity
Product: Community Reporter: Tobias Oberlies <t-oberlies>
Component: Project Management & PortalAssignee: Portal Bugzilla Dummy Inbox <portal-inbox>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: P2 CC: edouard, wayne.beaton
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Windows 7   
Whiteboard:
Attachments:
Description Flags
Commit Activity with Bar Chart none

Description Tobias Oberlies CLA 2015-01-05 04:18:38 EST 
The commit activity graph was changed from a bar chart to a line chart recently. IMHO this change should be reverted for the following reasons:

- A line chart emphasizes trends, whereas a bar chart emphasizes the absolute values. E.g. when there is a month with 30 commits between two months with 40 commits, it looks as if that was a bad month for the project. But this is absolutely not the case. A bar with 3/4 of the height of the neighboring bars would make this clear.

- At the beginning of the month, it looks as if commit activity is declining. The current month is not complete, so the commit numbers are lower than before most of the time. With a line chart, the chart ends in a line with a negative trend. This leaves a bad impression. A bar chart would also be much better here.
Comment 1 Wayne Beaton CLA 2015-01-05 18:10:38 EST 
The obvious drop off on the current month has been bothering me for a while. Let's try this.
Comment 2 Edouard Poitras CLA 2015-01-06 10:39:31 EST 
Created attachment 249740 [details]
Commit Activity with Bar Chart

How's this?
Comment 3 Tobias Oberlies CLA 2015-01-07 05:29:46 EST 
(In reply to comment #2)
> Created attachment 249740 [details]
> Commit Activity with Bar Chart
> 
> How's this?
I like it a lot!
Comment 4 Edouard Poitras CLA 2015-01-07 10:18:14 EST 
Wayne also mentioned in a meeting that not displaying the current month is also an option.  Is that a better solution?
Comment 5 Wayne Beaton CLA 2015-01-07 20:29:29 EST 
(In reply to Edouard Poitras from comment #4)
> Wayne also mentioned in a meeting that not displaying the current month is
> also an option.  Is that a better solution?

The thought is that the current month makes any style of chart suggest a downward trend. If we restrict the chart to only complete months, then it would be a true reflection of the activity (though it would be at most a month stale).
Comment 6 Tobias Oberlies CLA 2015-01-08 04:12:33 EST 
(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to Edouard Poitras from comment #4)
> > Wayne also mentioned in a meeting that not displaying the current month is
> > also an option.  Is that a better solution?
> 
> The thought is that the current month makes any style of chart suggest a
> downward trend. If we restrict the chart to only complete months, then it would
> be a true reflection of the activity (though it would be at most a month stale).

As a project member, I like to be able to see how we are doing in terms of commit activity in the current month. With the bar chart, I can see this information, and it seems reasonably obvious that the bar in the current month may still be growing. To me, the bar chart is emphasizing the absolute numbers and not so much the trend. But if you are worried about a misinterpretation of the current month, the colour of that bar could be changed to a lighter colour.

I really don't like the line chart. If we go back to bars, IMHO we can leave everything else as it is.
Comment 7 Edouard Poitras CLA 2015-01-08 11:26:35 EST 
The commit activity graph is now a bar chart again.
Comment 8 Tobias Oberlies CLA 2015-01-09 05:13:02 EST 
(In reply to comment #7)
> The commit activity graph is now a bar chart again.
Great! Thank you.