Re: [Gimp-developer] About closing feature requests as invalid

[scl <scl gplus gmail com>]

Hi,

yes, it's a bit tricky.
One goal is to take care for bugs in a timely manner to
let the reporter know that we care as well as to
save developers from drowning in open bugs.
The other thing is to sound friendly even if we say
'No, not this way'. That's why I did some investigation
about the reported issue and posted the request myself
here instead of simply saying 'Go to the mailing list'.
Thirdly I think Bugzilla is even less visible to the
broad audience than the mailing lists, so lengthy
discussions in Bugzilla have less chances to solve anything.
If we failed to take accepted feature requests on the mailing
list to Bugzilla in the past, this should be no reason
to do it wrong in another way.

However, you have a point in saying ''Invalid' sounds
too harsh'. If we found a better solution I would be
the last to hamper it.

Currently I see the following solutions:
- a friendly stock answer we agreed about to guide the
reporter the right way,
- the policy change you proposed,
- feature voting like [uservoice.com]. I saw newer Bugzilla
versions should be able to support [voting], but I neither
know whether nor when it will become part of GNOME's Bugzilla.

Kind regards,

Sven

[uservoice.com]
http://demo.uservoice.com/

[voting]
http://www.bugzilla.org/docs/4.2/en/html/voting.html