Poor BTS interactions (Re: [all candidates] Removing or limiting DD rights?)

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:

> Well, I certainly didn't mean to imply that bug report handling is not
> something we should look into improving. It's the causation relationship
> between that and the decreasing number of bug reports which seems
> unlikely to me.

I think it is likely a real factor, though I have no evidence for
that.

But I think any good solution that is likely to fix it would have to
involve somehow finding more volunteers to work on bug report
handling.  In my experience, Debian package maintainers generally are
friendly and have their heart in the right place but just get
frustrated after a while at trends like this one:

 http://qa.debian.org/data/bts/graphs/l/linux.png

and this one:

 http://qa.debian.org/data/bts/graphs/l/linux-2.6.png

I don't have any good fixes in mind, except for sharing work with
upstream and other distros.  That means:

 * making sure there is always a version with upstream support
   packaged in experimental, and ideally in stable-backports as well

 * working with bug reporters to test a recent version and backport
   fixes when they are found that way

 * explaining to bug reporters how to report their problem
   appropriately to upstream channels (and using the "forwarded" field
   in the BTS to indicate when that's done)

 * helping out on the upstream bugtracker so upstream has no reason to
   resent the increased workload you are providing

I've been following this strategy for packages I work on, and it seems
to work well.

Thanks,
Jonathan