On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla

[Jim Ault]

On 2/23/06 11:07 AM, "Dan Shafer" <revolutionary.dan at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd be all for making Bugzilla far more useful. I even have some ideas
> for how to do that. But frankly that's up to RunRev, not the
> community, and my guess is that they have enough To Do Lists that they
> don't need any more ideas from me!

Time, effort.
I don't use Bug or Revzilla.
My category is not 'developer' or 'exorcist' since I only do my own tools in
a limited way to achieve a profitable(?) result.  No time to complete the
due diligence to 'recipe' a bug report, especially since it is probably
already reported.

I will very likely never know enough about Rev to do a good bug report.  I
would most likely not use the correct term to do a search to find all bugs
related to groups-management anyway.

It would be nice if there was a wiki that would categorize bugs
(text-in-fields, icons, standalones, Win32 vs Mac) that would read more like
a book or simple outline.

Anyway, hearing about them on the list is the only way I really come in
contact with them, so I agree with Dan, Bugzilla is not useful for me.

Don't have a good solution, but did have time to vote on this issue by
typing this email.

Jim Ault
Las Vegas


On 2/23/06 11:07 AM, "Dan Shafer" <revolutionary.dan at gmail.com> wrote:

> In another thread, Sarah Reichelt made the following observations
> about Bugzilla in response to Xavier's complaints about stability of
> 2.7 on WinXP:
> 
>> I have looked at your list of reported bugs in Bugzilla. I find 126
>> unfixed bugs reported by you (though some seem to be duplicates)
>> however only 4 of them have any votes. Of those 4, 1 is rated as
>> trivial, 2 as minor and only 1 as major. None of your bugs has been
>> sufficiently important to get ANY votes from you. If you do not attach
>> much importance to them and no-one else has felt them to be relevant
>> enough for a vote, then the Rev development team probably thinks there
>> are more important issues to concentrate on.
> 
> This provided me with an opportunity to say something I've been
> meaning to say for some time but never had a "trigger" for.
> 
> While I am absolutely certain that RR doesn't rely solely or even
> primarily on Bugzilla to set its bug-fixing agenda, I am equally sure
> they do take it into account. And that's a shame because the reality
> is that the number of people who use Rev regularly who: (a) are aware
> of Bugzilla and its purpose; (b) have purused the bug list in an
> effort to ferret out those that are most important to them and apply
> votes to them; and (c) monitor it on an ongoing basis so they know
> which bugs are being fixed and therefore where they can reapply their
> votes is minuscule. I don't do that. I'm not sure how many others do.
> 
> If I create a new bug entry in Bugzilla, it would not even occur to me
> to vote for it. By posting it and giving it a rating, I think I *am*
> voting on it. Particularly given that I have a limited number of
> points to allocate among bugs, I have to be judicious. (Until a few
> months ago, I didn't even know I could change my votes around even
> though it's perfectly clear from a close examination of the program
> that you can do that.)
> 
> So I don't think the status of bugs in Bugzilla is an adequate
> representation of the state of the product. I'm sure there are a ton
> of suspected bugs that their discoverers never file because: (a)
> they're not really sure they're bugs and confirming that would take
> too much time; (b) they don't find Bugzilla a very welcoming
> environment in which to post bugs (even with the wonderful Revzilla
> around to take away a lot of the pain); and/or (c) they don't think
> about it.
> 
> I'd be all for making Bugzilla far more useful. I even have some ideas
> for how to do that. But frankly that's up to RunRev, not the
> community, and my guess is that they have enough To Do Lists that they
> don't need any more ideas from me!
> 
> --
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author
> http://www.shafermedia.com
> Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
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