[Libreoffice-qa] retest ping to UNCONFIRMED bugs older than 6 months

[Tommy]

On Wed, 05 Nov 2014 22:46:03 +0100, Robinson Tryon  
<bishop.robinson at gmail.com> wrote:

> ....
>> moreover we have to decide if pinging just UNCONFIRMED old bugs or even  
>> NEW
>> bugs (excluding the easy hacks).

if the "ping campaign" is accepted by the QA, we only have to decide the  
timeframe of bugs to test...
older than 6 months or older than 1 year etc. etc.

my proposal is to ping:

UNCONFIRMED bugs older than 100 days
http://snipurl.com/29ejxgd  (183 bugs)

NEW bugs older than 2 years (*)
http://snipurl.com/29febjl  (439 bugs)

(*) we should screen for easy hacks from this count and remove them if  
present


> Pinging these bug reports makes sense as long as
> 1) it's going to save the QA team a lot of time
> 2) we're getting a good response from the bug reporters
>
> I think that both UNCONFIRMED and NEW reports could benefit from this
> type of follow-up ping, but the proof will be in the data.
>
> Best,
> --R

as said to Beluga, the ping message will take QA a minimal effort since  
it's just an automated message we send once.

then all the real job will be done to reporters and other people on CC  
that will retest and hopefully give feedback... the QA team will only have  
to wait.

even if only 5% of the pinged bugs will turn into WORKSFORME it will be a  
win since we will not spend anymore time try to triage again those bugs.

moreover the automated message will serve like a kind of reminder to users  
to upgrade to latest LO version... it's not rare to see people still using  
obsolete LibO releases (like 4.1.x or early 4.2.x) just because they don't  
follow our rapid release cycle.

having people using very old LO release is detrimental since they could  
keep reporting bugs that are not present anymore in the current releases.  
so our ping campaign could serve as an upgrade campaign as well