Re: [gentoo-dev] Bug voting

[Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org>]

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On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 16:37:03 -0400 Dylan Carlson <absinthe@gentoo.org>
wrote:
| On Tuesday 27 July 2004 4:09 pm, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
| > Uh, no. They are assumptions based upon a very large body of direct
| > evidence. Since we can't go and ask every single user what they
| > think, that's the best we can get.
| 
| No, that's the best you have, which is another way of saying, nothing.

I'd hardly call 30,000 emails and however many forums posts there are
"nothing".

| > No, the top-10 will end up containing "support reiser4 in g-d-s" and
| > "add kernel-I'm-not-allowed-to-name to portage". See aforementioned
| > OTW thread.
| 
| Again, assumptions.   Even if that were true, and most of our users
| wanted reiser4 in g-d-s, then I hope we would at least give them some
| time to consider it.

Go take a look at the thread.

| b) Subtle but important to whom?  You?  Yes, I can see why letting
| people vote would be a problem for you.  It would potentially shift
| the priorities from the things you feel are important to what the
| users feel are important.

No, subtle as in "this bug will cause people various really strange
problems, but they won't realise what's causing it". Don't forget, the
package maintainers quite often know a lot more about the package and
the way it interacts with the system than the bug submitters and voters.

Good example: the automagic link detection before DHCP feature that
people keep on wanting in baselayout. Looks nice on the surface, lots of
people saying "yes please", but suddenly when it's implemented we get
thousands of users with broken networking because it turns out that that
nifty link detection feature isn't universally reliable.

| Because it encourages participation in the process of developing
| Gentoo.   It gives people a feature to tell us what's important to
| them, instead of just filing bugs which, to some users, seem to be a
| black hole.   Voting gives people a simple way of expressing, "this is
| important to me".

See below...

| Perhaps it would lead to less people filing blocker/critical bugs if
| they felt they could attract attention to a bug by other means.

Assumptions

| Really.  How would enabling voting cause "serious problems" for
| developers?  
| 
| 1.  It doesn't change how you (or anyone else) is using Bugzilla
| 2.  It's a completely opt-in feature, for users and devs alike
| 3.  It can be quickly disabled at any time.

Well, either the voting affects developers, in which case it's a serious
problem because it'll detract from the bugs which are *actually*
important, or it won't affect developers, in which case your claims
above are effectively meaningless.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Sparc, MIPS, Vim, Fluxbox)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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