Re: On maintainers not responding to bugs

[Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au>]

Reid Priedhorsky <reid@reidster.net> writes:

> On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 00:30:23 +0100, Ben Finney wrote:
>
> > 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".

Yes, indeed.

> > 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.

The distinction I was making was between "notification that your
report has been sent to a mailbox", and "notification that your report
has been acted upon by a human".

The important property of the latter case is notification to the
submitter that the message has actually been read and acted upon by a
human developer. Whether the *notification* is automated or typed in
manually is immaterial for this distinction.

-- 
 \      "When I was born I was so surprised I couldn't talk for a year |
  `\                                     and a half."  -- Gracie Allen |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney