launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[James Westby <jw+debian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon Oct 26 21:21:02 +0000 2009 Tom Berger wrote:
> 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.

That's not true for Ubuntu. One of the subscribers to all Ubuntu
bugs is

  https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs

so it is possible to get this without the LP subscription for Ubuntu.

I agree with your points for other projects.

> 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.

Point them to the mailing list instead?

> 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.

They are not useful on /any/ Ubuntu bug in my opinion. I'm pretty
sure the only people that are subscribed to all Ubuntu bugs are
those that are running scripts, those that want the archives, or
spammers. All of these can use the mailing list.

The list of subscribers is useful to me to know whether the person
I want to read the bug is going to get mail about it.

I have never wanted to know whether one of the people subscribed to
all Ubuntu bugs was subscribed, as none of them appear to particpate
in development. As far as I am concerned showing them on every bug
page is a waste of perfectly good bits, no information is ever provided
by them being there.

The same thing pretty much applies to the package pages where
subscriptions are listed. It's not useful to know that these people
are subscribed to the bugs for that package through a subscription
to every Ubuntu bug. They aren't going to deal with the bugs of that
package with that mechanism.

I would be happy if these subscribers were never presented in the
lists. In fact I happened to ask jml the other day if it would be
possible to do this. Making the change would save me a couple
of seconds every time I look for someone in the list of subscribers
to an Ubuntu bug.

Thanks,

James