Re: [gentoo-dev] Bug voting

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 15:26:46 -0400 Dylan Carlson <absinthe@g.o>
wrote:
| On Tuesday 27 July 2004 2:45 pm, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
| > Those are assumptions based upon a very large amount of evidence
| 
| So you admit that they are assumptions, based on anecdotal evidence.

Uh, no. They are assumptions based upon a very large body of direct
evidence. Since we can't go and ask every single user what they think,
that's the best we can get.

| > No, I'm saying it's an indicator which already exists if someone
| > wants to find out how popular their bug might be, nothing more.
| > However, Cc: list spamming is pretty pointless, whereas vote
| > spamming could be construed to mean something.
| 
| Funny, that's the idea.  It's not spamming if you have a finite amount
| of votes.  People can spend them any way they choose.  If you spend
| your votes on enhancement requests to app-misc/hello-kitty, that's
| your choice.

That's just it, though. Doesn't take much effort to get a few hundred
Off The Wall readers to register multiple accounts and vote-bomb a bug
because it's 'funny' or 'cool'. Like I said, search for "portage
ignorance" in Off The Wall and you'll see a perfect example.

| What ultimately matters is the sum of all user votes.  It's safe to
| say the top-10 most voted list would be something we should consider
| paying more attention to.

No, the top-10 will end up containing "support reiser4 in g-d-s" and
"add kernel-I'm-not-allowed-to-name to portage". See aforementioned OTW
thread.

| > | I frankly don't understand why you're so outspoken on this issue. 
| > | You can ignore votes if that's what you choose to do.  This is not
| > | a policy change proposal, this is an enhancement request for
| > | Bugzilla.
| >
| > 1) Because it will lead to "this bug has over a hundred votes, why
| > is it being ignored?" posts.
| 
| And would such posts be unreasonable?  I don't think so.  If a bug has
| a large # of votes relative to everything else, and it IS being
| ignored, it's a valid question.

You're assuming that a) votes equate to what our users want, and b) our
users understand every single issue involved. As Peter already
suggested, the subtle but important bugs won't get voted on, because
most people don't know what they're about.

| > 2) Because it is yet another field in bugzilla. We already have far
| > too many clicky boxes for most people.
| 
| We have a wizard bug reporting interface which does not change as a
| result of bug voting.  At most the bug page will show the # of votes,
| and will add one more link at the bottom to vote for the bug.  Big
| deal.

Our interface is already complex enough that most people need a wizard.
Why add even more to it?

| > 3) Because it will lead to vote spamming. Search the Off The Wall
| > forum for "portage ignorance" for a good example of why this won't
| > work.
| 
| Hmm, voting seems to work pretty well for KDE and Mozilla, among
| others.  And it's a trivial change, which again, you seem to be
| reaching for reasons to shoot holes through.  If it doesn't work out,
| we turn votes off, it's as simple as that.

It's a trivial change with a rather large potential impact which
shouldn't be implemented until all the implications are understood.

| > | Also please read: http://www.unixguide.net/freebsd/faq/16.19.shtml
| >
| > Posting irrelevant links does not make an argument.
| 
| It's not irrelevant, if you actually take a minute to read it instead
| of posting more FUD against bugzilla voting.

Of course it's irrelevant. The colour of the bike shed doesn't matter.
Whether or not we enable a feature which could end up causing serious
problems for developers matters a lot. Two entirely separate issues.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Sparc, MIPS, Vim, Fluxbox)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm