| 1 |
Daniel Drake posted <43EFA485.4060709@g.o>, excerpted below, on |
| 2 |
Sun, 12 Feb 2006 21:11:33 +0000: |
| 3 |
|
| 4 |
> 2. Be careful with INVALID resolutions |
| 5 |
> |
| 6 |
> The term invalid _is_ harsh in bugzilla context, so make sure you write |
| 7 |
> a quick thankful-sounding comment to go with it. |
| 8 |
|
| 9 |
I like all the suggestions, but this one hits a particular sore spot, as I |
| 10 |
had it happen to me, with I think my second Gentoo bug filing. What made |
| 11 |
things worse is that the filing was after my arch team had asked for |
| 12 |
volunteers to perform specific tests (multilib-strict), and I had gone to |
| 13 |
significant effort to do so, having builds die that would otherwise have |
| 14 |
completed successfully. |
| 15 |
|
| 16 |
As it happens, the bug /was/ valid, and was eventually resolved |
| 17 |
(impressively quickly, I might add =8^) when I refiled it when the next |
| 18 |
version came out. I had something inadvised in my CFLAGS that |
| 19 |
the developer had seized upon as an opportunity to mark the bug invalid |
| 20 |
and get it out of his way, that in reality had nothing to do with the bug |
| 21 |
(a 64-bit shared object installed to lib instead of lib64, independent of |
| 22 |
CFLAGS, inadvised or not). |
| 23 |
|
| 24 |
Calling the bug "invalid" can be taken personally as saying the opinion |
| 25 |
and work that the user put into getting and filing the bug was "invalid", |
| 26 |
therefore, that the user shouldn't bother spending his time on Gentoo at |
| 27 |
all, as they don't matter and they and there opinion are "invalid". |
| 28 |
|
| 29 |
Consider this: INVALID is strong enough, under the wrong circumstances, |
| 30 |
that it /could/ set an emotionally unstable user off, causing them to |
| 31 |
commit suicide or something. I /know/ it was deeply depressing here, |
| 32 |
that first time, altho the effect on me would have been to simply push me |
| 33 |
back to Mandrake and cause me to become another anti-Gentoo activist, as I |
| 34 |
wasn't already suicidal. Some people /might/ be! One never knows the |
| 35 |
emotional state of someone filing a bug, so consider carefully the effect |
| 36 |
INVALIDating the bug might possibly have on their entire life. Would |
| 37 |
/you/ want that on your conscience, that it had been /your/ action, the |
| 38 |
marking of that one last bug they filed as INVALID, that finally tipped |
| 39 |
them over? I know I wouldn't! |
| 40 |
|
| 41 |
Obviously, I like the idea of NOTABUG better, or consider using WORKSFORME |
| 42 |
or WONTFIX. Those get the same general message across, without having the |
| 43 |
implication of INVALIDating the user's bug, possibly/likely conveying the |
| 44 |
message that they are not welcome as a Gentoo user, or worse yet to |
| 45 |
someone already unstable, that their whole life is INVALID. |
| 46 |
|
| 47 |
Thanks, Daniel! |
| 48 |
|
| 49 |
-- |
| 50 |
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
| 51 |
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
| 52 |
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in |
| 53 |
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html |
| 54 |
|
| 55 |
|
| 56 |
-- |
| 57 |
gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |
Archives