Bug#543815: Establishing a "Severity" rating

[maximilian attems <max@stro.at>]

clone 543815 -1
reassign -1 reportbug
retitle -1 overinflated linux-2.6 bug reports
stop


dear reportbug maintainer,

never seen this trouble so nicely phrased.

On Sun, 30 Aug 2009, Stephen Dowdy wrote:

> RE:
> [ Severity set to 'important' from 'critical' Request was from maximilian attems <maks@debian.org> ]
> 
> I just wanted to point out that i had difficulty determining HOW to address
> the severity field in reportbug.
> 
> Because i *do* have a workaround to the "problem", it's not critical to *me*
> anymore, and wasn't at the point i submitted the bug.
> 
> But the question that debian reportbug asks is:
> 
> --------------------------------
> 
> How would you rate the severity of this problem or report?
> 
> 1 critical        makes unrelated software on the system (or the whole system) break, or causes serious data loss, or introduces a security hole on systems where
>                   you install the package.
> 2 grave           makes the package in question unusable by most or all users, or causes data loss, or introduces a security hole allowing access to the accounts
>                   of users who use the package.
> 3 serious         is a severe violation of Debian policy (that is, the problem is a violation of a 'must' or 'required' directive); may or may not affect the
>                   usability of the package. Note that non-severe policy violations may be 'normal,' 'minor,' or 'wishlist' bugs. (Package maintainers may also
>                   designate other bugs as 'serious' and thus release-critical; however, end users should not do so.)
> 4 important       a bug which has a major effect on the usability of a package, without rendering it completely unusable to everyone.
> ...
> 
> Please select a severity level: [normal]
> 
> --------------------------------
> 
> in a generic sense, this *problem* is critical, because it
> DOES render end-user systems broken.  "...makes...(or the whole system) break..."
> (not being able to boot due to kernel panic certainly falls under "system breakage")
> So, given the language from reportbug, i answered honestly that this
> bug does indeed break the whole system, therefore it is a critical problem.
> 
> my *specific* problem *report* itself is not critical, because i am
> operational now that i've determined the nature of the problem.
> (if i were under a security compliance obligation and was still
> incapable of booting my system due to this bug, i would consider
> this problem VERY critical)
> 
> So, in this reply, i am simply voicing my concern that a better
> wording in reportbug addressing this type of discrepency be employed.
> 
> Perhaps a distinction between end-user "urgency" and problem "severity"
> is needed.
> 
> It's certainly not my intent to distract developers from more
> important tasks (i can tell from other bug reports i'm not the only
> one affected by this, but i don't believe the affected end-user
> base is very large)  I only bring this up, because i've also seen
> other users wonder about how to classify bug report severity as well.
> 
> thanks,
> --stephen

*one* box not booting is not a critical bug in the sense that it works
on X other boxes, so it doesn' make the package unusable for all the
other, could you have an cuttof for linux-2.6 submittions on important
severity and let us maintainer upgrade specific ones, instead
of beeing bothered every day to have to downgrade X reports.

thanks

-- 
maks