Auto Bug Expiry on Launchpad

[Colin Watson]

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 05:00:22PM -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> In an ideal world I would agree with you, but unfortunately things
> rarely work out that way.
> 
> A _bug report_ is not the same thing as a _bug_.  As best it's a grainy,
> fuzzy photo of something that *might* have been a bug at one time.
> 
> Bug reports often are set to Incomplete if the issue is vague.  Often,
> if the original reporter never replies to elaborate and clarify and the
> bug is left open for months and months, someone else with a completely
> different problem will eventually come along and, mistakenly thinking
> they have the same problem, will add comments that don't help the
> original reporter.  Further, they don't file a new bug report, so this
> second bug is lost.

On the contrary, many of the bug reports that I see inexperienced bug
triagers setting to Incomplete are in fact detailed, accurate
descriptions of the problem, sometimes even with something approaching a
fix attached.  The reporter merely hasn't jumped through our artificial
hoops of confirming that the problem still exists in the last six months
when asked by an inexperienced triager who didn't understand the
original detailed report, and if they get bored with our constant
pestering about it then we summarily close their bug.

This is a very poor situation, and it reflects poorly on Launchpad as a
system and on Ubuntu as a distribution.

> Our mission here is not to boil the ocean.  Our mission is to make
> Ubuntu a better distribution.  Working on bug reports is one of several
> ways we can invest invest time to achieve this.  Other activities such
> as direct hardware testing, patch backporting, or coding can have
> better payoff for the time invested.

Many of my complaints would be fixed if we actively discouraged
inexperienced contributors from starting out with bug triage.  The net
effect of the current situation, for me, is to waste time that I might
otherwise have been able to spend on development.  If I don't waste that
time, then people I don't know cause items to be removed from my to-do
list without consulting me or ensuring that those items are in fact
fixed.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]