> On Mon, Feb 26, 2007 at 01:51:25PM +0100, Loïc Minier wrote:
> Instead of forging crappy excuses to say
> every time I lack time to do this or that, which is with time,
> frustrating and demotivating enough.
>
> SO rather than sending excuses-templates,
it's not an excuse template it's:
- an indication the effort of submitting a bug report is apreciated
- an indication the effort will _not_ be ignored in the long run
-> this has a big impact on the image of the project
-> this encourages people to keep getting involved in a simple way (by
filing bugs). The resulting positive experience of having gotten
involved in Debian in a minor way then increases the chance that people
will get involved in other -more involved- ways later, and bug triage
might very well be 1 of those ways. Doubly so if your template mail
asks for help with bug triage.
(Aside this is actually exactly how I got involved with translation, I
reported a problem and got a pointer on how to help, I branched out
from there)
I think we've all been in situations where we switched from software A to
software B because project A ignored (or seemed to ignore) our bug reports
and/or patches?
Now ask yourself which project your more likely to get actively involved
in: the one giving feedback, or the one that seems to ignore you?
- an indication that actual fixing of the bug will take a while
-> this avoids avoids unrealistic expectations on the bug reporters part
-> this avoids bug reporters bugging the maintainer every couple of
days/weeks/whatever with "hey what's going on" (with asociated mounting
frustration on both sides)
> And hell no I won't send "standard" mails to submitters, I hate to
> receive such mails, I won't send such. I like to receive mail when there
> is useful information. When I submit a bug, I know there is one, so the
> "ack there is a bug" mail is somehow ... polluting my mailbox.
the point is not acknowledging the existence of the bug, it's acknowledging
the effort of the submitter and expressing an appreciation for it.
This both increases the chance the submitter will get more involved in the
future, and decreases the amount of frustration.
(NOTE: we're mainly talking about bugs that rot in BTS for months or longer,
so' it's not about sending such a mail for _every_ bug, just for those bugs
you know you're not gonna get around to any time soon)
> Though, in this discussion we're talking a lot about the past.
Quite to the contrary, see below...
> For KDE, we (I say we as a habit, but I'm not really in the team
> anymore...) struggle with the old antiquated bugs a lot
dealing with antiquated bugs already in bts is another problem entirely as
in that case the bad experience (for the bug reporter) has already been
had, and the damage's been done.
Having such an old bug closed is great, but I suspect that in many cases the
bug submitter will have given up and moved on anyways.
-> we're not talking about cleaning up old messes but avoiding new ones
> but I think we're able to keep up with new bugs since bts-link exists.
and this would indicate the KDE team is succeeding in doing that now, which
is great :)
> bts-link improved our workflow a lot, because now, when a new bug
> arrives, then you need to check its validity, and if it's verry annoying
> or not. If it's not a major blocker, then you forward it upstream, and
> mark the bug as forwarded. The improvement, is that thanks to bts-link,
> we then can forget about that bug completely, as we will be notified
> when upstreams made progress on this.
>
> Obviously, for many reasons, the submitter is not really notified
> about what is going on, but:
> * looking at the BTS he can in one click read the upstream bug log,
> and follow-up there if neede ;
as long as the sumbitter knows Debian maintainer has forwarded it upstream
this is not a problem (for Debian), because at that point any frustration
about non-responsiveness will be pointed at the upstream project and not
the Debian maintainer and Debian.
> I quite choke on his words, because I really
> think KDE packaging workflow has never been better in the last 3 years.
> It does not mean it can't be even better, but we're definitely working in
> the good direction, and are not slugged either.
happy user of kde packages myself, and I definately agree that things have
improved enourmously the last several years, so let me take the opportunity
to give you guys a heartfelt thanks :)
--
Cheers, cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis)
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