launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Lange <jml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Robert Collins
<robert.collins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/758587 describes a challenge
> we have; counting bugs is expensive.
>
...
> We have a choice:
>  - make the data utterly precise
>  - be a bit simpler and accept some inaccuracy
...
> So, specifically to jml & Deryck, but also to the whole team and any
> users following this discussion: is it ok to be slightly inflated but
> fast?
>

As others have said, for drive-to-zero lists, it's important to be
both precise & accurate at low numbers. This goes for bugs in general
and many sublists of bugs (Critical & Needs triaging being two obvious
kinds), but also goes for merge proposals, untranslated strings and so
forth.

I think it's also important to allow API users to get precise numbers
if they need them, with some discoverable, reasonable promise about
the accuracy. The ideal would being able to get numbers that are fully
precise and fully accurate. I think that default APIs can afford to be
imprecise.

Thanks for chasing this up.

jml