Provide charts that visualize issue activity over time

Can you explain what a chart showing the number of followers over time will help anyone understand about an issue? Yes, we could graph that... but why should we? What would it tell us? What would it help us understand? How would it improve our ability to get things done? Do we ever expect the shape of this graph to look significantly different? Seems much more useful to put effort into displaying the total # of followers, which would help us understand popular issues. But a graph?

Just because we can graph something doesn't mean we should. ;)

Thanks,
-Derek

Just for the record, I too don't see any actual use of implementing this. It might be nice to have it in the page that lists followers (as a side-effect we are visually "consistent" with the projects' usage stats page), but that's it. IOW, yeah I don't object, but we can focus our energy elsewhere (wherever we actually benefit) instead of this.

Personally I think a graph is a more useful heuristic than a listing of users who follow an issue.

Velocity is also a metric which can be created from this. Thus if an issue has a high velocity, you understand as a maintainer, than a bunch of people just ran into (or found) this issue. Perhaps they found it from upgrading from one version to the next, where it was initially found in -dev. Thus a graph would let you know this. Velocity would as well.

One thing we can add to the graph is the release dates of versions of the module.

Another thing, which I feel is important to get added to follow, is for the user to attach which version of the module they are experiencing this issue under. I believe this is an important piece of information to collect.

Unfortunately, the -dev module is not timestamp'd very well, so it makes this statistic, less useful for -dev.

@j0rd: As I said Jordan, I don't support implementing this one, but...

Another thing, which I feel is important to get added to follow, is for the user to attach which version of the module they are experiencing this issue under. I believe this is an important piece of information to collect.

Unfortunately, the -dev module is not timestamp'd very well, so it makes this statistic, less useful for -dev.

I believe you might be interested in these two:

#66484: Allow issues to be filed against multiple versions/branches.
#1171958: Allow files to be assigned to branch(es)/version(s) and thus tested against it

Anyways, this part of your comment (and thus my reply to it) are off topic ;)

Personally I think a graph is a more useful heuristic than a listing of users who follow an issue.

Great, that's your personal opinion. However, if you want me to seriously consider this, please answer the questions I posed in #1. Reiterating that your personal preference is to have a graph doesn't make a more compelling case.

For the record, I'm a *huge* fan of data visualization, and have been one of the most persistent voices calling for more meaningful graphs, sparklines, etc to understand WTF is happening on d.o. I just don't see a compelling case here for how a graph showing followers over time actually tells us anything about an issue. Again, just because we can graph this doesn't make it a meaningful visualization that enhances our ability to comprehend something.

Feel free to reopen if you're going to answer these concerns. Otherwise, this isn't worth continuing to discuss.

Thanks,
-Derek

Seeing total number of followers is not nearly as useful as seeing followers added per month. Knowing these numbers would clearly convey the growing/waning interest in any issue.