launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Robert Collins <robert.collins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 8:28 AM, Dan Harrop-Griffiths <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> RE: Bug titles
>
> I think the key issue here is writing better bug titles, keeping them
> as short as they need to be. Perhaps some tips on writing more concise
> titles is something that could be added to the wiki.
>
> Dan

That is dependent on our users working harder - something we cannot control.

There are, today, 400K bugs with titles longer than 48 characters.
Showing those is an *existing* issue, and we would need to justify the
human cost of fixing those 400K vs showing them gracefully : that cost
comes from our users, and I would expect resentment and push-back
unless they feel they are getting something for their effort.

Certainly, we could say  'fix your bugs to make them show nicely in
our system', but I question whether that is a good idea: given that
folk want to be reasonably expressive. I often have trouble describing
a *function* in 70 characters (python doctring), let alone a one-line
summary of a complex fault interacting with multiple difference
components.

I'm not arguing for arbitrary length bug titles: but I do think that
the length of bug titles today is not happenstance, nor arbitrary. I
think for most (e.g. 95% or 99%) it is a combination of:
 - friction where our UI shows things poorly (drives shorter than some
N characters)
 - need to express the issue (drives longer lengths)

And for the rest its just insanity ;)

-Rob