Include justification in tagging bugs ‘$FOO-ignore’

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Howdy all,

As I understand it, the ‘$FOO-ignore’ tag is a means to tell related
tools that a bug should not be considered in the criteria for the
release of $FOO.

While the tools will do what they're told, it seems to me that such
tags are mostly used to treat individual bugs as a special case. In
such special cases, much distress can be avoided on the part of the
potentially numerous humans observing the bug report if we require, in
the very message that tags the bug ‘$FOO.ignore’, an explicit
justification of *why* this particular bug does not merit such
consideration.

In other words, if a tag indicates a special case, that special case
should be justified with a specific explanation.

I would like to see such justification expected for every such tag,
enforced by the convention that tags with *no* justification provided
can be summarily removed by anyone. This would place the burden of
argument in the correct place, as I see it, while not needing anything
as heavy-handed as a policy requirement.

Is that feasible? Is it reasonable?

(good sigmonster, have a cookie)

-- 
 \     “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, |
  `\                               neat, and wrong.” —Henry L. Mencken |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney