[Community-Discuss] Raising concerns

[Alan Barrett]

Dear Dabu,

> On 25 Jun 2018, at 12:43, Dabu Sifiso <dabu.sifiso at yandex.com> wrote:
> The numbers at the following location are puzzling:
> https://www.afrinic.net/en/services/statistics/rt-stats
>  
> What is "Total logged" vs "Total opened"?
>  
> The total amount of tickets closed is consistently lower than the total amount opened per month in all the categories.
> The backlog can only increase based on those numbers.
>  
> What happens with the tickets in the "Total still open" category, how are they reported from one month to the next month?
> I assumed they might be in "total logged", but then the numbers do not add up.

I agree, the statistics are difficult to understand, and some things don’t seem to add up.  I hope that we can improve the statistics soon.

In the table near the top of the page at <https://www.afrinic.net/en/services/statistics/rt-stats>, I believe that “Total logged” is the number of new tickets created; and “Total opened” is the number that transitioned from ‘new’ state to ‘open’ state (spam tickets can be closed without ever reaching ‘open’ state).  I think that there is no carryover from one month to the next, so tickets opened in one month, but closed in another month, appear in the “Number opened” count under the first month, but do not appear in the “Number closed” count in the last month.  This is confusing.

> I can see the older tickets eventually get closed as in May hostmaster had an  "RT Average Turnaround Time" of over 85 days.
> So obviously ticket from previous months were being closed as they drastically dragged the average TT up in May.
>  
> What was the age of the oldest ticket closed in May?
> Was it 5 months old or older?

The oldest ticket closed in May 2018 had been opened on 3 January 2018.

Notice that there are two averages: For hostmaster tickets opened in May and also closed in May 2018, the average was 1.69 days; for tickets opened before May and closed in May, the average was 85.38 days.

Averages are obviously not a very good way of reporting these statistics.  I have sent the IT team some suggestions for better statistics.

> How are the days from the turnaround time counted?
> Does 7 days equal to one calendar week (Monday to Sunday) or to 7 working days (Monday to Friday)?
> 85 = ~12 calendar weeks (12 X 7 days weeks).
> or
> 85 = ~17 weeks of working days (17X5 working days weeks)?

These statistics use calendar days (7 days per week), not working days (5 days per week except, minus holidays).

Alan Barrett