reportbug and the ubuntu-user mailing list

[Daniel Robitaille]

As you may be aware, reportbug is current installed by default in
Dapper, and if used by the user, it will try to email to bug report to
the ubuntu-user mailing list (Malone bug #36186).  The end result is
that these bugs reports:

a) end up buried in the large number of emails on the list, most
probably not to be seen by any developers (if it happens that the
reporter used the same email address he registered to the list)

or more likely

b) get stuck in the mailman moderation queue of the list, until one of
the list administrator deals with it (that's usually done by Corey
Burger nowadays).

In April and until now in May that's over 70 bug reports that didn't
automatically reach Malone.    These reports have the usual range of
bug report quality (good, bad, dupes, contains patches, etc), but
generally tends to be good since the reporter is often a more
experienced user (since it's not an obvious command to know of)

In recent days a couple of us (Carthik Sharma, Corey Burger, and
myself) have managed to look at half of these 70 reports and triage
and submit the good reports  to Malone, but it's a slow and boring
process and historically these reports tends to not be dealt with for
days (or weeks) until someone get around to do it.

So my question:  why do  even install reportbug by default in Dapper
since it is somewhat broken?  I can understand that one day the
reportbug-Malone email interface will work, but obviously it will not
occur for Dapper.  And by not installing it by default, maybe that
would decrease the number of reports we get via this back-channel that
needs to be dealt manually by some of us.

Each time I see one good report that has been stuck that way for a
long while, I feel a bit bad for the users who spent the time to
submit us these reports only to be ignored for a long while (and
sometimes forever)  due to a problem with our technical
infrastructure.

-- 
Daniel Robitaille