What are tickets?

[Akira.system]

"Thank you for your report.
However, your ticket has been resolved as invalid."

What is a ticket, anyways? I just started using Mojang's official issue tracker JIRA thing because of an issue I was having, I mention that I used Optifine, and some moderator guy mentions my "ticket" (as shown above).

I have been searching all day trying to find out what in tarnation a "ticket" is suppose-to be, to no avail. There are apparently no mentions of any way to find out the meaning of said term anywhere on that or related sites. I've searched the JIRA Knowledge base, searched on related pages, and searched on the issue tracker page, the JIRA help/tutorial section place, and now, here. WHY are there no links to anything for these sort of terms? Why has seemingly no one else asked? Why am I so clueless, while everyone else seems to know what it means? Did all of those who already knew remove the pages where it tells you these sorts of things' meanings? Why is it not mentioned anywhere (publicly) as to what it means? Can I just not find it because it is hidden where no one will think to look for it before giving up? I don't even know if the internet will hold an answer that's easy to find, because there are so many different definitions of "ticket" out there! I don't even know enough to properly narrow said internet search down enough to get the desired results quickly, as far as I can tell!

I'm not missing something extremely helpful in just as obvious a place, am I?

Also, what are Tokens?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

"Ticket" is a word used in the IT industry to represent "something that someone needs to look at".  It's a really bad choice of word, because the English word "ticket" is not in the slightest bit representative of that concept, but sadly, we're stuck with it.

In this case, your "ticket" has been raised and tracked in Mojang's issue tracking software - they use JIRA which uses the far better word "issue" (not great, but a metric shed load better than "ticket").  In this context,"issue" and "ticket" are effectively equivalent, so all the stuff you've read about JIRA "Issues" you could reread and just think "Ticket" when it says "issue".

"tokens" are a bit more vague.  You could be talking about a concept in Mojang's systems, the tokens that browsers exchange with servers, items of no real monetary value that you can trade for goods or services.  It depends on the context in which you're using the term.

Anyway, to go back to the start of your question, someone at Mojang has resolved your issue by saying it's "invalid".  In JIRA, that resolution means "we are not going to do anything more with this issue because we do not think there is a problem".  You'll need to chase them up for more detail on why they think that, although I'd hope they've already explained it.  (See, it makes a lot more sense to write that paragraph with the word "issue" instead of "ticket")

[sean]

Let's thank Nic for their deep explanation (from 4 years ago). A lot of people don't exercise this level of rigor.

[Norman Abramovitz]

You are trying too hard.  It just means an issue.    It is common that an issue is called a ticket in the help desk setting.   Read the first paragraph.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/What+is+an+Issue

[Norman Abramovitz]

I would need some more context about where you have seen JIRA tokens.  What I did find is the following:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Clearing+%27Remember+my+login%27+Tokens

[Nick Reilingh]

It's in the Oxford English Dictionary.