[Libreoffice-qa] Stagnant NEEDINFO bugs

[Joel Madero]

> >
> > After suffering from the last two mass closure / re-initialisations of
> > status of a fair number of bugs I had spent time in opening, but for
> > lack of a dedicated developer / interest in those particular areas of LO
> > at the time (OSX bugs, Base bugs) they never got any attention, I for
> > one, will not be interested in this happening yet again.
>

The last one was very different from what we're doing now. These bugs are
currently in NEEDINFO status, the last mass closings have been on bugs that
were UNCONFIRMED. We have decided that closing UNCONFIRMED bugs without
anyone ever looking at them is not okay, but if we have looked at it and
given our volunteer time and have determined the bug needs more
information, if the user fails to provide that information, we should
assume the bug is abandoned. Currently our backlog of UNCONFIRMED bugs is
hovering around 1,400, we will not waste our time looking at NEEDINFO bugs
again - we simply don't have the time to waste.


> >
> > IMO, the rationale behind closing bugs in this way, i.e. "let's do it
> > and if the user/reporter is really motivated he/she is bound to get
> > back" sends completely the wrong message to the user community at large:
>

This isn't the rationale at all. This is a friendly reminder that they
reported a bug and abandoned it and announcing our new policy which is to
maintain a clean and accurate bug tracker. We could really say "you
abandoned this bug and it'll never be looked at unless you take the time to
update it" but that would be much less polite, this is just a friendly
"this bug has gone MONTHS without any activity after a QA member took the
time to look at your issue, if no activity occurs in the next month, the
bug will be assumed to be fixed and/or abandoned" -- the exact wording will
be agreed upon later.


> >
> > - it assumes that casual users/reporters are heavily implicated in the
> > project, or at least enough to defend their bug report tooth and nail;
>

No, it assumes that we all have a responsibility when using open source
(users and contributors) and that we can't ask volunteers to waste time on
poorly submitted bugs that have been abandoned by their reporters.


> >
> > - that many of these bug reports are fallacious or fanciful.
> >
> > While some of them might well fall into the second category, I fear that
> > many are from people who were incited to use the bug submission
> > assistant after encountering a troublesome or even serious problem in
> > their usage of the product and are then expected to get the "community
> > fervour". The reality of this is that if you make a tool easily
> > accessible for reporting bugs, then people simply expect that report to
> > be followed up on by someone else, more knowledgeable. This doesn't mean
> > that their bug report is any less worthy or relevant just because they
> > don't then follow-up.
>

Again, I agree with Petr, this product is free, if you're going to use it
and expect your issues to be tackled, we can reasonably expect a user to at
least update their own bugs. Ideally they would get "community fervour" and
start contributing outside of their own bug reports, but...this is
unrealistic.


> >
> > To me, the solution being proposed is yet another high-handed way of
> > "improving the stats" without due regard to those who made the effort in
> > the first place to submit a report.
>

This has nothing to do with stats, and I love stats. It's a matter of
keeping an accurate bug tracking system. INVALID will show us how many bugs
are essentially abandoned by their reporter which is not our fault. What
Petr said was exactly my feeling, it's a matter of, what's the point of
leaving these bugs in NEEDINFO status when our contributors have already
looked at the bug and determined more is needed before we proceed AT ALL.
NEEDINFO status should "mean something" and that something should be "A QA
member has looked at this bug within the last 30-60 days and determined it
needs more information before proceeding" -- NOT "this bug was looked at
two years ago and determined that it needs more information but has since
been abandoned and will sit in this status forever"

These all seem like reasonable expectations of the user/reporter as well as
our contributors.

Just to repeat, we *will not* close a bug without a QA member first looking
at the bug, this means a contributor has already spent time on it,
expecting more of our contributors is not right -- ie. them guessing at
what a reporter is trying to report and spending a ton of time trying to
reproduce from a terrible list of steps or a lack of an attachment which
actually shows the issue.


Best Regards,
Joel



-- 
*Joel Madero*
LibreOffice QA Volunteer
jmadero.dev at gmail.com
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