Assigning bug to 'me' practice for triagers

[Carthik Sharma]

Hi Paul,

On 10/26/06, Paul Dufresne <dufresnep at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
> I have only recently actively working on bug triaging.


Thank you! :)

I have taken the habit, in most case, on an incomplete report, to assign
> the bug
> on me, as this is suggested to do on:
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage#head-65e5a5e189e28e52756baa61c7cd13b0f8121738


I have changed the page now. I think it would be unwise to have bug
triagers  "assign" bugs to themselves for the following reasons:
- "Assigning" a bug has the implied meaning of saying that person X will
fix/resolve the bug.
- Since we are all volunteers, if some triager assigns a bug to themselves
and stops being active in the future, the bug will be in limbo, since
someone who could fix/resolve the bug might think that the triager is
actually a developer/learner who wants to have a shot at fixing the bug.

This is/was making sense to me. The assignee, is the one taking care of
> a bug, RIGHT NOW.
> As the bug triager is trying to get more information before have it
> ready to be examined
> by a competent developer (confirmed state as I see it), it make sense to
> have it assigned to him.
> This way, searching for unassigned bug, become a reasonable way to find
> bugs that needs
> some action on them.


1) All bugs are equally deserving of love :)
2) You don't have to triage "all the way" -- in other words, it is perfectly
fine to do a portion of the triaging work - if you think you know the
package that a bug belongs to, assign that and move on if there is nothing
else you can help with at the moment. Together we can work much better than
if only one person works on a bug. We're all good at different things, and
should have the freedom to "roam" freely in the bug tracker.

It took me a number of reading at
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingUbiquity to realize that
> this is not permitted on Ubiquity:
> "Please do not assign ubiquity bugs to anyone unless you're a ubiquity
> developer or you manage a ubiquity developer."
>
> In fact, this message was initiated based on extract of Colin Watson, on
> a parted bug:
> "Unassigning Paul from this bug, unless he actually plans to write the
> code necessary to fix this.".
> On this particuliar bug, I felt relieved, because the reporter was quite
> annoyed at the way I was
> triaging his bug.


See, this is a particular case of when the baggage that is associated with
"Assigning" bugs comes into play. We would do well to avoid it all together.
You still can subscribe to bugs to keep track of the ones that you have been
traiging.

I have received a number of such comments, that I should not assign a
> bug to myself as a bug triager.


I said that once, I remember. Since it was an apparent error in the  wiki
page, I edited the wiki page to avoid misleading people.

So this email is a request to make sure 'HowToTriage bugs's suggestion
> to assign to oneself is right.
> And if so, see in what case/packages, this would be considered bad
> practice.



If anyone has any suggestions regarding improving the wiki pages to make
them reflect current practices, please bring them up here, or directly edit
the wiki.

Thanks a lot for your attention to detail, and for all the bug triaging you
do, Paul.

Carthik.

--
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>                           unladen european swallow
>
>
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-- 
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Central Florida
Homepage: http://carthik.net
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