launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Tom Berger <tom.berger@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

2009/10/26 Christian Robottom Reis <kiko@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 01:07:17PM +0200, Michael Bienia wrote:
>> The problem I see is the long list of implicit subscribers coming from
>> bug subscriptions to *all* Ubuntu bugs and making this portlet useless
>> for me (at least for bugs on packages) as can't tell anymore if someone
>> gets notified who really cares about the package.
>>
>> When I look at the implicit subscribers for the above mentioned bug:
>> - 5 subscribers to the bzr project
>> - 4 subscribers to the bzr package
>> - 1 subscriber to the python2.6 package
>> and
>> - 40 subscribers to all Ubuntu bugs (and 12 deactivated accounts)
>
> Nobody, really, should be subscribed to all Ubuntu bugs. That's probably
> more a problem with the subscription interface on the Ubuntu side than
> anything else -- Tom and now Deryck know about it, though!
>
>> So to fix this, the subscription to Ubuntu bugs shouldn't cover all
>> Ubuntu packages but just only those bugs that are filed against Ubuntu
>> (i.e. without a package). That's a valid reason I can think of to
>
> Even if that were the case, it wouldn't be very helpful to see that list
> on every packageless Ubuntu bug page, right?

Actually think that there are other legitimate reasons to subscribe to
all bugs. I like subscribing to projects wholesale just so that I
accumulate the bug mail in my gmail and can search for it there, for
example. Another use case is as a push channel for automated tools.
Launchpad doesn't provide any other way to receive notifications on
bug activity.

I think there are two things that need fixing:

1. The subscription interface should make it very clear what to expect
in regards to incoming mail volume. It happens that users subscribe to
Ubuntu without realising what they're doing and then agonize about
getting so much email.

2. The list of subscribers doesn't work well for bugs with a huge
number of subscribers. We'll have to come up with a better way of
providing this information.