Thanks for asking! We’ve written an entire document devoted to this question.\nIt’s titled Contributing to Django.
\nDon’t worry: We’re not ignoring you!
\nIt’s important to understand there is a difference between “a ticket is being\nignored” and “a ticket has not been attended to yet.” Django’s ticket system\ncontains hundreds of open tickets, of various degrees of impact on end-user\nfunctionality, and Django’s developers have to review and prioritize.
\nOn top of that: the people who work on Django are all volunteers. As a result,\nthe amount of time that we have to work on the framework is limited and will\nvary from week to week depending on our spare time. If we’re busy, we may not\nbe able to spend as much time on Django as we might want.
\nThe best way to make sure tickets do not get hung up on the way to checkin is\nto make it dead easy, even for someone who may not be intimately familiar with\nthat area of the code, to understand the problem and verify the fix:
\nAre there clear instructions on how to reproduce the bug? If this\ntouches a dependency (such as Pillow), a contrib module, or a specific\ndatabase, are those instructions clear enough even for someone not\nfamiliar with it?
If there are several patches attached to the ticket, is it clear what\neach one does, which ones can be ignored and which matter?
Does the patch include a unit test? If not, is there a very clear\nexplanation why not? A test expresses succinctly what the problem is,\nand shows that the patch actually fixes it.
If your patch stands no chance of inclusion in Django, we won’t ignore it –\nwe’ll just close the ticket. So if your ticket is still open, it doesn’t mean\nwe’re ignoring you; it just means we haven’t had time to look at it yet.
\nA polite, well-timed message to the mailing list is one way to get attention.\nTo determine the right time, you need to keep an eye on the schedule. If you\npost your message right before a release deadline, you’re not likely to get the\nsort of attention you require.
\nGentle IRC reminders can also work – again, strategically timed if possible.\nDuring a bug sprint would be a very good time, for example.
\nAnother way to get traction is to pull several related tickets together. When\nthe someone sits down to review a bug in an area they haven’t touched for\na while, it can take a few minutes to remember all the fine details of how\nthat area of code works. If you collect several minor bug fixes together into\na similarly themed group, you make an attractive target, as the cost of coming\nup to speed on an area of code can be spread over multiple tickets.
\nPlease refrain from emailing anyone personally or repeatedly raising the same\nissue over and over. This sort of behavior will not gain you any additional\nattention – certainly not the attention that you need in order to get your\nissue addressed.
\nSeriously - we’re not ignoring you. If your patch stands no chance of\ninclusion in Django, we’ll close the ticket. For all the other tickets, we\nneed to prioritize our efforts, which means that some tickets will be\naddressed before others.
\nOne of the criteria that is used to prioritize bug fixes is the number of\npeople that will likely be affected by a given bug. Bugs that have the\npotential to affect many people will generally get priority over those that\nare edge cases.
\nAnother reason that bugs might be ignored for while is if the bug is a symptom\nof a larger problem. While we can spend time writing, testing and applying\nlots of little patches, sometimes the right solution is to rebuild. If a\nrebuild or refactor of a particular component has been proposed or is\nunderway, you may find that bugs affecting that component will not get as much\nattention. Again, this is just a matter of prioritizing scarce resources. By\nconcentrating on the rebuild, we can close all the little bugs at once, and\nhopefully prevent other little bugs from appearing in the future.
\nWhatever the reason, please keep in mind that while you may hit a particular\nbug regularly, it doesn’t necessarily follow that every single Django user\nwill hit the same bug. Different users use Django in different ways, stressing\ndifferent parts of the code under different conditions. When we evaluate the\nrelative priorities, we are generally trying to consider the needs of the\nentire community, not just the severity for one particular user. This doesn’t\nmean that we think your problem is unimportant – just that in the limited\ntime we have available, we will always err on the side of making 10 people\nhappy rather than making 1 person happy.
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