Re: Bugzilla outstanding issues

[Christopher Blizzard <blizzard redhat com>]

Martin Baulig wrote:


> > A crash against gnome 1.0.40 with clear reproduction instructions
> > is worth leaving open until someone verifies that it doesn't
> > happen with the latest version. A random crash with 1.0.40 isn't;
> > but it isn't INVALID. Its a real crash, just one that we are
> > almost sure that has been fixed, and it isn't worth trying to
> > debug against 1.0.40. Thus OBSOLETE.
>
>
> Hmm, that's probably really a useful case for OBSOLETE.

I don't know if I agree with the use of OBSOLETE.  You are describing 
the code where the bug exists, not the bug itself in this case.  You 
WONTFIX the bug because the code is obsolete.  The bug itself isn't 
obsolete.


> > > It shouldn't be such a big problem to "just close" such bugs if there's
> > > a document somewhere which tells people why (and such a document can
> > > for instance be sent with the mail).
> >
> > If the document can be sent, that's fine. [ Pre-prepared comments, so
> > to speak. ] But closing bugs for no apparent reason will not
> > get us satisfied customers.
>
>
> What about these people who don't even take 1 full minute to file a bug
> report, who just launch bug-buddy and click next (entering random stuff
> just to make it let them proceed) until the bug report is filed ?
>
> I think if writing a reply takes more time than the user spent to submit
> the bug report (that'd be something like one minute or one or two lines
> of text in the reply), then a developer should be allowed to simply close
> it as INVALID (he can batch-close all of them from time to time, for
> instance).
>
> AFAIK many other free projects have much more strict requirements to submit
> bugs, but they normally have a document somewhere which tells people how
> to submit good bug reports and why a bug report may have been closed if they
> don't get any explanation by the developer.

That's one of the reasons why we actually ask people to sign up at 
Mozilla.org.  If people aren't really interested in submitting and 
cooresponding on bugs then it's not worth the developer's time to try 
and track it down.

We have a seperate mechanism for what you are talking about with 
bug-buddy that Netscape provides.  Those are talkback reports.  Those 
are crash reports from programs running out there.  If nothing else it 
allows you to do guesses on what are the top crashers of your software. 
 This is a completely seperate system from the bug system.

It might be worth it to do that here, too.  Keep bug-buddy crash reports 
seperate from bugzilla otherwise you end up with a really high noise to 
content ratio in your bug tracker.

--Chris

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Christopher Blizzard
http://people.redhat.com/blizzard/
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