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

[Jason Stewart]

Hey Matt,

Thanks for responding!

On 5/4/06, Matt Zimmerman <mdz at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> Duplicates are a fact of life, but it is not too much to ask, no.  Consider
> that it takes the bug reporter perhaps a minute to look for their bug, and
> then a few minutes more to write it up if they don't find it.  Then consider
> that all of these reports, from thousands of people, are funneled to a tiny
> development team, who must deal with all of the duplicates.  This means they
> spend less time on real bugs, which means less value for the users reporting
> them.

I agree with this.

>
> > It takes a lot of work to post a bug report. That discourages people
> > from posting.
>
> If that bug report is a duplicate, that effort is usually wasted.
>

Maybe, maybe not.

> > 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? Perhaps, but maybe not - just an
> > observation based on my admittedly limited experience - wondering what
> > you've encountered.
>
> If someone is not willing to spend a minute searching for a bug, will they
> be willing to answer questions about their problem to help get it fixed?
> Will they be willing to gather and send stack traces, debug logs, etc.?  If
> not, then I would rather receive the same report from someone willing to do
> so.

The real issue is that it is that many bugs are complicated. What I'm
hearing is that it is often the case that only a developer can know a
bug is really a duplicate or it it just seems like a duplicate. I
agree, some bugs the duplication is obvious. But I believe the process
should be:

1) Please look to see if your bug has already been posted
2) If you find an existing bug and you are *sure* that your bug is the
same, then there is no need to file a new bug
3) If you are not 100% sure that your bug is identical, please post a new bug.

But why complicate things? Are you so sure that this will really save
QA time? Or will it miss bug postings that looked like duplicates but
weren't? Or will people file bugs as duplicates that aren't and
confuse the developers more than if it had been filed as a new bug?

I don't know the answers, so these are just rhetorical questions. But
my gut instinct is to simply ask people to file a new bug, and let the
QA team sort it out. If a knowledgeable person is posting a bug s/he
will *already* know to check for duplicates and so you don't have to
tell them.

I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Thanks! jas.