The Differential dashboard shows three categories "Blocking Others", "Action Required", and "Waiting on Others". I have suggestions for improvements. I'm sure different people have different takes on this, so please let me know if a mailing list discussion is a better venue for this than a Maniphest task.
The current problems (for me):
- The English phrase "Action Required" seems like a superset of the phrase "Blocking Others", but the actual list isn't a superset of the other. I feel like even though I now use this dashboard once or twice a day, this oddity still makes my brain stutter for a moment.
- The "Action Required" list combines "Need to fix" and "Need to close". My state of mind is different when I'm deciding which of those review types I feel like tackling at the moment. It would be nice if they were separate lists. Maybe I'll eventually train my brain to look at the green stripe, but at this point I guess I feel like a separate list would be better.
- Though the term "Blocking Others" is a nice phrase because it conveys the importance of attending to those reviews, I think "Need to review" makes it more obvious what the group is. (Though maybe I'm wrong about what the "Blocking Others" list includes?)
- The "Waiting on Others" list combines "Waiting on someone to review my revision" and "Waiting on someone to push a revision I reviewed". I usually care a lot more about finding the first category than the second. Again, even though there's a green stripe, I think it would be nicer if these were separate categories. I even be fine if the second category wasn't shown on the dashboard.
What I think I want is the following four categories:
- Need to review
- Need to make changes
- Need to close
- Waiting on review
And then maybe the following two additional categories, though I wouldn't mind if these weren't shown on the dashboard:
- Someone else needs to make changes (I'm either reviewer or CC)
- Someone else needs to close (I'm either reviewer or CC)
(NOTE: I didn't take the time to figure out precisely what each category covered, so I apologize if I messed that up.)