unnecessary QA work (was Re: dapper-live test)

[Eric Feliksik]

Jason Stewart wrote:
>> unnecessary QA work.  In the future, when filing bugs, please first
>>  search to see whether your problem has already been reported.
> 
> Is this realistic to ask of people?
> 
> [...] I've been grateful for 
> anyone willing to take the time to report a bug. Maybe 50% haven't 
> been real bugs, but I feel that's one price to pay, and that it 
> really is QA's job ultimately (my opinion).
> 
> It takes a lot of work to post a bug report. That discourages people
>  from posting. Checking whether a bug exists already often takes
> quite a bit of searching as well - especially if it's the first bug
> you've posted on a project.
> 
> If you really discourate people by telling them not to post unless 
> they have first thoroughly checked whether it already exists - many 
> people will just not post. Is this what you want? [...]

Although overall it might cost some extra time for the users filing 
bugs, it *really* helps the developers fixing them. Duplicate bugreports 
are in the way and the devs are losing the overview in the massive 
amount of bugs. There are a lot more users than developers. If they all 
report the same bugs, the developer will be busy managing malone 
full-time. Pure overhead.

We do want people to file bugreports, but we'd like them to make *good* 
bugreports. Being non-duplicate is a property of a good bugreport. The 
value of an 'ungood' bugreport is arguable. It will probably display 
some info, but it's info is poor by definition, and it *is* distracting.

That said, of course we'd like to make the life of the bug-reporting 
user easier. Henrik's suggestion of a few minutes ago is a nice idea.

Eric