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On Friday 16 February 2007 09:37:00 Alan McKinnon wrote: |
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> There's an upside as well though. If many people keep reporting the same |
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> bug in different ways, it tells themaintainer that the bug is higher |
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> priority. If a bug is reported only once, and everyone else that runs |
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> into it sees this bug report, and doesn't report their experience, then |
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> the maintainer doesn't know about these users. So he/she might consider |
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> the bug to be less important, and that would be wrong. |
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I strongly disagree with this (or at least how this sounds to me). Dupes are a |
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necessary evil because we can't all be perfect at searching bugzilla but |
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considering them to be good just doesn't make sense in my head. |
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Everytime the subject of making it possible to vote on bugs has come up the |
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counter argument has been that the list of CC'ed people already serves that |
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role just as well but without giving the false impression that enough votes |
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will get it fixed. |
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If you want to make it known that you care about any given bug just CC |
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yourself on the bug. I want to make it very clear that purposefully filing |
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dupes to draw attention to an annoying bug is *only* wasting bug wranglers |
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(yep, not the maintainers (and yep, that means jakubs) ;) time just like |
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producing "I confirm this is a bug" comments as the 10th user after it's been |
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acknowledged is only useless bugspam... (I'm sure you didn't mean to do that |
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either but still..). |
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What will get any given bug fixed is for someone (who doesn't have to be dev) |
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to sit down and figure out a solution (and attach it on the bug)... An |
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unlimited number of users saying it's a problem doesn't help at all if |
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there's still noone able to fix it.. |
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> Good maintainers consider users to be like customers and sometimes they |
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> do get annoyed with many dup bugs. |
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Can't really agree with this. They aren't paid so most of the best devs do it |
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solely for their own sake (and because they find it interesting). Also good |
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maintainers fix bugs even if only one user experience it if it's a bug and |
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they are able to fix it. Quality > quantity. |
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> But usually they want reports and it's no big deal or effort actually to |
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> mark a bug as a dup. |
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With the above in mind I guess I can agree on this. If you are unable to find |
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a bug you're experiencing then you'll have to file one to get it fixed (even |
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at the risk of missing it and hence filing a dupe). We all want bugs fixed... |
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-- |
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Bo Andresen |
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