On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla

[David Vaughan]

On 26/02/2006, at 0:50, "Sarah Reichelt" <sarah.reichelt at gmail.com>  
wrote:
<snip>
> To digress slightly, I think the reason Rev appears to have so many
> bugs is because it is so versatile. We all use Rev in different ways
> to do widely different projects. I ignore some bugs because I never do
> the things they refer to. Others find the same bugs to be project
> blockers. Then again, some people use Rev in a way that the
> development team never imagined. That's great, but it means they will
> be the first to strike bugs in those areas. By comparison, testing a
> single-use application like a word-processor should be simple, but
> they still crash :-)

Very true. Rev is a complex application. The productive efficiency of  
writing it in itself, as it were, should not fool anyone into  
believing otherwise.
>
> I wonder is the Rev team doing itself a disservice by letting all Rev
> users access the bug reports? While most people seem to value the
> chance to point out problems and influence future versions, some
> people regard a public bug list as an admission of failure. Maybe it
> would be better to restrict bugzilla to members of the improve-rev
> list or make it by invitation only.
Perhaps rather than restricting it by fiat, RR could make access to  
the bug list voluntary, just as it allows switching on access to this  
list or doing so in digest or e-mail form. If you "sign up" then you  
also receive notifications of changes to the bug list [optionally  
Selected or All], the intention being to keep you actively involved  
while you continue your interest but shutting the list off from  
casual access. Sign-up would also be a moderated event. Thus, engage  
those who are interested (and allow them more votes) with full  
information available, still open in principle to anyone.

Meanwhile, Rev could also provide a "Problem report" option under the  
Help menu where you did not have access directly to the bug list but  
had the opportunity to enter a problem, rate it on its own (with  
reasons), and have some lookup of related problems (based on selected  
category or on key terms) so that the user could also say their  
problem is the same as or like or unlike others which from their  
terms appear to be related. Thus, serious simplification with  
information concealment while still allowing free report.

My general idea is to retain for all the ability to report to the  
real list even if that list remains behind the scenes, allow the  
simplest and easiest access for anyone to do so, and to engage more  
effectively by interaction the users motivated to provide comparative  
voting rather than one-off voting. Give me some critique and I will  
try making an enhancement proposal.

These are speculative thoughts on my part.

> Just a few random thoughts,
> Sarah

regards
David