Currently @Stashbot adds excerpts from system administration logs whenever a task is mentioned in an entry; e. g. T152440:
This layout has several visually confusing shortcomings when viewed in connection with other items on a task's timeline:
- In the place where usually the acting user's name is displayed, it says @Stashbot.
- The acting user's name is in a different domain (IRC); in some cases, users use the same nick name in Phabricator and IRC, in some (like this one) the reader has to deduce who the acting user is.
- The timestamp is redundant (except for debugging).
- It is labelled as a comment, but it is a log entry; comments are expected to reply to previous conversations, etc., log entries are meant to give other system administrators a short overview what has happened (and may have caused havoc).
@gerritbot faces the same problems, but due to the move to Differential on the horizon it is probably a moot point.
I suggest that @Stashbot's functionality is (better) visually integrated with Phabricator, i. e.:
- The acting user should be the Phabricator user who has claimed the referenced IRC nick name.
- The timestamp should be set to the actual log time.
- The "top line" should read: "@fgiunchedi added a log entry in #wikimedia-operations.".
- The "box" should read: "upload ieee-data 20160613.1 and upgrade jessie machines to it T152440".