Re: UNCONFIRMED state in Bugzilla (was Fwd: [Bug 542087] Graphical glitches after "change scroll region"

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org>]

On 07/31/10 06:27, Tobias Mueller wrote:
> Hey folks,
> 
> On 31.07.2010 02:19, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:
>> Hi Olav & infra,
>>
>> Given that we don't make the UNCONFIRMED vs NEW distinction in GNOME (AFAIK),
>> can we just remove UNCONFIRMED?
>>
> Eh. You (not you in person) are supposed...

I know what I'm *supposed* to do.  What I'm saying is that given what people
*actually* do, I think it makes sense to remove UNCONFIRMED.

> ...to mark bugs that are identified of being an issue worth fixing as NEW.
> As opposed to bugs that are not an issue

Which would be NOTABUG or some variant.

> or not yet reproducible.  That way, potential
> contributors see what's worth being worked on.

The problem is, sometimes the effort needed to "confirm" a bug is the same
effort as fixing it.  And when no maintainer has spent that effort yet, some
user comes across the bug and say "7 years and still not confirmed".  At the
end of the day, the reality is that no one cares about confirmed or not.  The
bug is either fixed, or not fixed.


> Cmp. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html#status:
> 
>  UNCONFIRMED
>     This bug has recently been added to the database.

So, should bugs be automatically moved out of UNCONFIRMED after two weeks?
Three months?  A year?  5?  And into which state?  This "recency" part is
problematic in its own right.


> Nobody has validated that this bug is true.

Sometimes it's impossible to validate unless digging straight into the code.


> NEW
>     This bug has recently been added to the assignee's list of bugs and

Again, what does this "recently" mean?  Bugs may stay in bugzilla open for
years (like, 10 years).  What's recent about them?


> must be processed.

Excuse me?  "must"?


Bottomline: you can word it as you wish, but as a maintainer, I've only seen
it adding bugzilla noise.  And I'm speaking of my experience watching the
entire traffic on glib, pango, gtk+, vte, gnome-terminal, gucharmap,
gnome-common, and a couple other bugzilla products for quite a few years.

You can't WONTFIX it, but it's not NOTABUG. :P

Cheers,
behdad

> Bugs in this state may be accepted, and become
> ASSIGNED, passed on to someone else, and remain NEW, or resolved and
> marked RESOLVED.
> 
> Cheers,
>   Tobi
>