Re: description of "general" pseudo-package is misleading (leads people to use it as a catch-all)

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

(moving Mikko to bcc to avoid spamming him)
Don Armstrong wrote:

> retitle 661241 vlc probably using wrong sound output by default (but not clear from reporter)
> reassign 661241 vlc
[...]
> Mikko Koho: I'm guessing as to what your problem is, but you're going
> to have to provide more information in order for anyone to address it
> properly. Please indicate which version of vlc you are using, which
> sound output it is using, etc.

Thanks, Don, and sorry about my (lazy and) misguided response.

There were once many bugs in the "the font suddenly became too big"
style misfiled against "general" that no one was addressing which hid
the actual general problems that the developer body at large could be
working on.  I see no easy way to solve that.

When it is obvious which package is relevant, that's great ---
someone can forward the report to the maintainer and reassign it.

When a report has an unreachable reporter and so little detail that
forwarding it would not be useful, that's fine, too --- a friendly
person can close the bug with a pointer about how to prepare a more
detailed report in case someone interested finds it.

The difficult cases are in between: carrying out the back-and-forth to
get such details as what action precipitated the problem, what result
was expected, what happened instead, and how the difference indicates
a bug, with debian-devel cc-ed, does not seem particularly productive.
If the "general" package did not exist, such reports would be quickly
redirected to debian-user with a goal of finding an appropriate
maintainer who could take responsibility for fixing the problem.  What
is an appropriate equivalent when receiving reports through the BTS?

I like to imagine that clarifying whether assigning a bug to the
"general" means "I don't know" or "I suspect fixing this bug will
require touching many packages" could help so these bugs are sent
somewhere appropriate in the first place.  Sane?

Jonathan