Standard replies

[Brian Murray]

On Sun, Feb 07, 2010 at 10:16:21PM +0100, Geir Ove Myhr wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm wondering how the process is for adding/changing the standard
> replies at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Responses . Is this the place
> for a discussion?

In the past we haven't really discussed any edits that happen to that
particular page.  I am subscribed to the wiki page, as I imagine other
interested parties are, and keep an eye on the responses.
 
> In my opinion, many of the answers are somewhat arrogant. Especially
> the phrase "Unfortunately, we can't fix it because/without <missing
> information>". It gives the impression that if the reporter had
> provided this information, we would have fixed the problem. Of course,
> in reality we know that fixing bugs can be an elaborate process
> involving upstreams of various verbosity and a lot of work. We also
> know that after triage many bugs don't get any attention at all since
> we simply don't have enough manpower to handle all the bug reports. So
> wouldn't it be an idea to be a little bit more honest and humble?

Yes, absolutely.
 
> Another example is when the bug has been untouched for a while,
> especially if that is not due to the reporter being slow. The current
> standard response is:
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
> Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been
> any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an
> issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in
> advance.
> 
> If the reason is lack of manpower a more honest response may be something like:
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
> Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always the capacity  to
> look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There has been many
> changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your
> problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. Could you test
> Lucid, the latest development version, and see if this is still an
> issue for you. If it is, we would appreciate if you could upload
> updated logs by running `apport-collect <bug #>` and any other logs
> that are relevant for this particular issue.

This sounds good to me too.  I might also mention that it is possible to
test lots of bug reports using a Live CD of the development release as
opposed to having to install it.
 
-- 
Brian Murray                                                 @ubuntu.com
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