Re: [gentoo-dev] Bugzilla etiquette suggestions

[Marien Zwart]

On Sun, Feb 12, 2006 at 09:11:33PM +0000, Daniel Drake wrote:
> I wrote most of this a while ago but didn't get round to finishing it.
> This seems appropriate at this time, so here it is :)
>
> Here are some small *suggestions* for how I think we can motivate users
> on Bugzilla to contribute more, and to contribute more often. I'm not
> suggesting this be enforced as policy, but it would be nice to see other
> developers giving this some thought. I'm far from perfect here, but I am
> working on sticking to my own suggestions more and more.

Agree with and try to follow most of this myself, but I'm hesitant
about:

> 4. Give the user a chance to make minor corrections
>
> If a user contributes a patch/ebuild which is slightly wrong, and the
> issue is non-critical, don't immediately correct it on their behalf and
> commit it to get the bug out of the way.
>
> Instead, provide an explanation of their mistake and give the user a day
> or two to correct it and attach an updated version. This has the bonuses
> that the user definately won't repeat that mistake in future
> contributions, and they will have the nice feeling of full credit for
> the contribution after you name them in the ChangeLog :)
>
> If they don't respond in that time, make the correction yourself and
> commit it anyway.

I think this is too much effort, especially for small corrections. I
tend to fix them myself, commit with a message like "...based on an
ebuild from ... (bug #....)" and comment on the bug like "Committed
with minor changes". It would probably be a good thing if I went into
a bit more detail about what the "minor changes" were and why I made
them, I guess :)

<snip>
> I think a short note of thanks in the bugzilla comment can go a long way
> (suggestion: thank them for something in particular so that it doesn't
> sound so generic).

I am extremely bad at the "not sounding generic" bit... :(


-- 
Marien.