launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Jeroen Vermeulen <jtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2011-09-19 03:13, Robert Collins wrote:

> > You may be interested in Kirit Sælensminde's work on bug classification,
> > which I summarize (not too well, probably) here:
> >
> > http://pqxx.org/development/libpqxx/wiki/AllSoftwareIsBroken
> I've seen that before I think, perhaps you mentioned it on IRC? I
> think thats a good categorisation for user impact. It would be
> interesting to have an (optional) field for that for user problem
> reports. I don't know if the complexity is worth it : will most users
> know enough to categorise it well? If many or most won't, perhaps
> we're better offer assessing this ourselves?
I probably mentioned it before, yes.  As for users knowing enough to use 
this: the whole point of this bug classification scheme is that it 
describes the problem from the user's perspective, and so the user gets 
it right more or less by definition.  The development team's job is not 
to second-guess and twiddle the user's problem report, but to _add_ 
their more technical assessment to it.  This also helps sort out 
permissions questions, hurt feelings, good problem reports proposing 
solutions, and so on.
Again, this particular model needs more work and I'm not saying we 
should just start using it as-is.  But future bug reporting and task 
tracking doesn't need another optional field; it needs a clear and 
explicit separation of symptom, diagnosis, and treatment.

Jeroen