Re: Rant about stupid bug reporters who can't be bothered to check for identical bugs before reporting their "new" one (Re: Bug#55602: gnu-standards: version 2.13-17 still has package overlap)
>>>>> "Nicolás" == Nicolás Lichtmaier <nick@debian.org> writes:
>> <RANT> *Always* check for duplicate bugs before submitting a
>> new bug report. I am copying this email to debian-devel in
>> hopes that it will stem the flood. </RANT>
Personally, I always check for existing bugs in the hope of
getting out of filing a bug report myself ;-)
However, this has the side effect that the maintainer has no idea how
many people have encountered a bug or how urgent it is to fix the
problem. Perhaps if the bug tracking system had an option for adding
other people who are interested in a bug, this wouldn't be a
problem. However, I seem to remember there are long standing wish list
requests for this feature.
Nicolás> This is wrong. We should encourage bugs from any
Nicolás> user. Lots of reports. If you impose some strange policy,
Nicolás> an user with a problem won't report the bug. Reporting a
Nicolás> bug must be an easy, trivial task. What we should do is
Nicolás> to improve the bug system in order to make it easier for
Nicolás> the maintainer to merge the reports.
I agree with this.
Not sure how you could make it any easier though.
One way might be to have a (web?) interface that lets you select
individual bugs from a list, merge all these bugs, change the topic,
and/or reassign to another package. I am not sure about the security
and/or SPAM implications though.
--
Brian May <bam@debian.org>
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