Re: On maintainers not responding to bugs
On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 00:30:23 +0100, Ben Finney wrote:
> Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> writes:
>
>> Just for reference, what is currently sent is the following[1]:
>>
>> Thank you for the problem report you have sent regarding Debian.
>> ^- an indication the effort of submitting a bug report is appreciated
>>
>> This is an automatically generated reply, to let you know your message has
>> been received. It is being forwarded to the package maintainers and other
>> interested parties for their attention; they will reply in due course.
>> ^- an indication the effort will _not_ be ignored in the long run
>>
>> Your message has been sent to the package maintainer(s):
>> [...]
>
> There's a huge difference, though, in the effect on the submitter
> between receiving an automated "your report *will in the future* be
> read by a human being",
...which most submitters will read as "your report *may* in the
future be read by a human being".
> and receiving a (possibly automated) "a real
> human *has* read your report and has made the following triage
> decision on it".
Automated in this context worries me a little. To have value, the note
absolutely must be initiated by the maintainer him/herself and not some
automated system.
I see the following two possibilities when a bug report goes
un-acknowledged by a human:
Situation 1: Maintainer is absent / doesn't care / didn't notice / etc.
Result 1: No ack.
Situation 2: Maintainer is present, noticed, cares, etc., but doesn't ack
bugs as a matter of personal policy.
Result 2: No ack.
It's difficult/impossible to tell which situation applies without a
non-automatically-initiated acknowledgement that the bug has been seen by
a human.
Reid
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