ubuntu-bugcontrol team mailing list archive

[Marc Randolph <mrand@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Sense Hofstede <sense@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> The policy is that we close bugs when the reporter hasn't response for
> a long time -- a month or longer -- to clean the bug reports and make
> sure our view isn't cluttered by still open, but useless bug reports.
> Since the reporter doesn't respond we're unable to get to know if it
> really is a bug and if it hasn't been fixed yet. Therefore it makes
> the most sense -- at least, to me -- to mark it as Invalid.
>
> However, please don't close bugs already after two weeks of silence.
> Also, include a request in your explaning comment for the reporter to
> reopen the bug in case he or she is prepared to provide more
> information.

Howdy Sense,

While I agree in principle, IMHO there should be a somewhat common
exception (and so perhaps the policy needs updating).  I see that
policy holding for incomplete and/or old bug reports where no valid
responses from anyone have occurred (so they are truly abandoned).
But as long as _someone_ is responding to that ticket and we have a
high confidence they are encountering the same issue, it seems to me
that it shouldn't be closed simply because the original reporter no
longer responds.  I'm sure that we can find thousands of launchpad
tickets where the problem description, triage, and patch testing were
all performed by some other than the original reporter.

I suppose an alternative could be that we could ask one of the other
commenters to open a new bug report, and then request everyone else
that is subscribed to the to switch over to the new bug - but in my
mind, that is wasteful because:

1. Creates more bug spam via the churn of closing and opening another bug
2. Requires additional action on the part of users to open another bug
3. Loses the history of the old bug
4. Requires additional action on the part of people subscribing (or
else some kind soul has to manually subscribe all those people)
5. Human error my result in leaving some users behind watching the
now-marked-invalid bug

Ignoring waste, imagine the user outcry of closing a bug with multiple
(be it two or twenty) "me too" comments, simply because the original
reporter hasn't responded in X months!

Launchpad's bug pages encourage people to search and not open
duplicate bugs for identical issues.  I think that, when there are
active people responding with the same problem, not closing the ticket
rounds that out and provides the most user friendly face to Ubuntu
bugs.

Best regards,

   Marc