Should we make it harder to assign a bug to yourself?

[Andrzej Hunt]

On 04/10/15 09:36, Tor Lillqvist wrote:
> I have recently noticed a rush of what looks like newbies assigning bugs
> to themselves. (Those bugs that have their status changes sent to this
> list.)
>
> Doesn't experience show that in a large number of cases, this is wishful
> thinking, and once they realise how hard it is, many of them will just
> drop it and forget to assign back, so the bug stays assigned even if
> nobody actually is working on it? That then might prevent somebody else
> (who might me more skilled/motivated/lucky) from working on it.
 >
 > Should we make it harder to assign a bug to yourself?

FWIW Mozilla already block bug assignment privileges for new accounts - 
it doesn't seem like this has caused them any huge problems, so I think 
copying their approach would probably be a good idea.

New Mozilla contributors are still able to ask to have a bug assigned to 
them via the bug's comments, and usually this is only done after at 
least a preliminary patch has been submitted. To request bug editing 
(and assignment) permissions requires you to have submitted at least 2 
patches, or to have found 3 bugs requiring editing [1] - triaging 
permissions can be requested without any such requirements though.

This won't completely eliminate the problem (I'm guessing some people 
might give up after they've already uploaded a first, potentially 
broken, patch) - but it could help reduce the number of abandoned bugs 
somewhat.

Cheers,
	Andrzej


[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=get_permissions.html