Openmoko Bugtracker

[Sjors Provoost]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 2:16 AM, Holger Freyther <zecke at openmoko.org> wrote:
> Hey,
>
> the signal noise ratio of the bugtracker is in a state that I'm close to
> ignoring it completely.
>
> It can not be that:
>        - People say +1 and me too. It is not a popularity contest
>        - People playing with components, milestones, severity...
>        - Hijacking bug reports. How and when should such a hijacked bug be closed?
>        - Not checking for duplicates before posting their bug.

This seems to me, as has been suggested by others, a simple design
issue. The bug tracking system is way too complicated for anyone but
the most experienced developers. It is great that you make the bug
tracking available for everyone, but each of the issues you are
mentioning are completely inevitable.

And they will get worse with more users too; even if 90% of the users
was completely educated, the remaining 10% would produce an unbarable
noise.

I already filed a bug report on the admin trac about this issue two
days ago, speeking of not checking for duplicates :-)

https://admin-trac.openmoko.org/trac/ticket/1499

I have a number of suggestions:
* normal users can only fill in summary and description and can not
even see the other options
* a dedicated mailing list for new issues, e.g. tickets at openmoko.org
* a clear "tutorial" on how to properly process these issues (i.e.
look for duplicates, assign to the right department)
* anyone who is willing to follow the tutorial can join the ticketes
mailinglist and ask for increased privileges

Furthermore:
* different mailing lists for different components
* only mail tickets of the right component to the right mailinglist
* do not mail the entire list upon changes of the tickets (although
people can also just mute the topic in their mail client (e.g. gmail:
press m)

This should free up this devel list a lot; current traffic is too high
for anyone but full time employers.

Personally, I would really like to see *more* people file bug reports,
rather than less.

Sjors