Launchpad bug retesting

[Sitsofe Wheeler]

Many bugs reported turn out to be "hit and run" reports where something
is filed and never followed up. As such it is good that bugs are
aggressively closed where possibly to prevent launchpad cluttering up.
Unfortunately there are scenarios where this becomes problematic.

These days I see people romping through launchpad asking for bugs to be
retested on pre-releases of Ubuntu (which may be months away from their
final release). These bugs are stuffed into a Incomplete state and then
one month later closed (due to lack of response) before the final
release of Ubuntu is ever released. Sometimes these are bugs with very
thorough descriptions which are reproducible all the time so there is
nothing stopping the launchpad gardener checking the problem.

A flip side of this is that sometimes a bug is reported and again at
some point before the next major release a request for testing is put
out. The reporter goes away, tries the pre-release and tests the bug and
reports back. Then another request to test another pre-release comes up
because "maybe it's been fixed" but without any firm reason for this
other than a minor point release change. Thus the bug is turned into a
game of how many pre-releases the reporter can keep up with.

The problem with all these requests for retesting is that the more bugs
someone files the more retests they will be asked to do thus punishing
those who file real bugs that are not resolved. In order to keep
bugs.launchpad.net manageable perhaps collateral damage is inevitable
but if you are expecting people to be repeatedly testing things every
month (or see their bug closed) then it would be nice if this was stated
up front.

-- 
Sitsofe | http://sucs.org/~sits/