ubuntu-bugcontrol team mailing list archive

[Matt Fischer <matthew.fischer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 04/04/2012 11:15 AM, Brian Murray wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 04, 2012 at 01:28:23AM +0100, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> > I was asked by Logan_ on #ubuntu-bugs to remove the assignee and
> > change the status back :
> >
> > (01:13:13) Logan_: Can somebody change the status of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/jockey/+bug/804662 to "Confirmed" (and remove the assigned person)?
> > (01:13:14) ubot2: Launchpad bug 804662 in jockey "jockey-gtk crashed with TypeError in _execute_child(): execv() arg 2 must contain only strings" [Undecided,Fix released]
> > (01:13:46) Logan_: It was incorrectly marked as Fix Released by a newbie, and someone assigned it to himself randomly, and I can't change the values back.
> >
> > On investigation it looks a bit odd; there have been lots of status
> > changes in a short time, all by users who've existed for only
> > a few days/weeks, all with 0 karma, and membership of no groups.
> >
> > I can't quite see why - it feels spammy but maybe there is a sane
> > explanation.
> I believe this happens because Launchpad does not do a good job of
> explaining what bug terms (status, assignee, importance) mean.  Then
> when you have a bug with lots of duplicates or users affected those
> people are trying to help but don't know how Launchpad works.  This
> results in strange changes to statuses and assignees.  I don't believe
> there was an malicious intent.
>
> --
> Brian Murray
> Ubuntu Bug Master

I looked at this last night and the odd variety of users who assigned 
this to themselves made me think it was not spam, but people not knowing 
what to do.  Also once a new user sees that the last guy assigned it to 
himself, he figures that he'd better do it too, and it propagates.