Re: [gentoo-dev] Bug voting

["Stephen P. Becker" <geoman@gentoo.org>]

> 
>>| I frankly don't understand why you're so outspoken on this issue.  You
>>| can ignore votes if that's what you choose to do.  This is not a
>>| policy change proposal, this is an enhancement request for Bugzilla.
>>
>>1) Because it will lead to "this bug has over a hundred votes, why is
>>it being ignored?" posts.
> 
> 
> And would such posts be unreasonable?  I don't think so.  If a bug has a 
> large # of votes relative to everything else, and it IS being ignored, 
> it's a valid question.
> 

The answer is, that depends on the feature/ebuild/bug being voted on.  I 
think ciaranm's thought on this point really gets down to the heart of 
the problem with voting.

There are two ways of looking at this.  First, we as devs have a 
responsibility to incorporate features/ebuilds and fix bugs that our 
users want.  Second, we have a responsibility to protect our users from 
completely fragging their systems, even those who have demonstrated they 
will go out of their way to do so at any chance.

I think the first point is adequately covered by bugzilla as it is.  If 
a user wants a new ebuild included or a bug fixed, he/she files a bug 
for it.  The problem with this is that we simply don't have enough devs 
right now to cover the sheer volume of stuff in bugzilla.  This is a 
fixable problem, however.  As for the second point, I think we already 
do a good job at that, like not including certain kernel source packages 
that include potentially dangerous patches like reiser4.  We also inform 
users we will not support them if they install 3rd-party-sources or 
stuff from breakymgentoo.  This is all very reasonable.

Considering these two points, I think you have to either say "yes, we 
are going to prioritize high votes" or "we're going to protect our users 
from potentially unstable stuff and use discretion instead."

Now that I've rambled on, let me get to what I really think.  I believe 
bug voting would be great for bugs that are truly problems with 
supported configurations/ebuilds.  However, I do not think voting should 
be considered for additions of new ebuilds into portage.  It will create 
too many posts whining that system-killer-6.6.6.ebuild has not been 
added to portage.  As I said before, I'm not sure we can have it both 
ways without there being problems, so I would say voting is a bad idea.

Steve (geoman)

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