[rfc] bug handling priorities

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Martin Pitt writes:

 > The main thing is that as a developer community we need to stop
 > feeling guilty about having "New" bugs,

Do developers actually feel guilty about new bugs?  I admit they make
me feel real tired, real fast -- but I know my limits, and those of my
coworkers.  It's the user community that often considers them a
symptom of developer inadequacy (whether in time allocation or
sometime quality).  They may be "wrong", but they can't be ignored.
This seems to be especially true for products used by developers, like
languages, programmers' editors, and VCSes.

I grant that whether internal "guilt" or external user pressure,
developers need to consciously prioritize these things.  But there may
be "automated" ways to alleviate the problem.

For example, one thing that Python-Dev discussed (don't recall the
resolution, if any) was changing the presentation of the weekly
tracker report to emphasize "progress indicators" (fixed bugs, applied
patches, milestones achieved) instead of "bug flow indicators" (new,
closed, and currently open issues).