Severity levels

[Nicklas Börjesson]

I am not sure that common sense is the issue. I think it is a question of who you are and what you know. 
Among the ones submitting bugs now is a quickly rising percentage of normal-to-advanced end users, and that percentage is likely to rise even further, as Linux adoption rates increase. 10 million desktops is the last number I've heard..and people are learning how to report problems. Hell, my mom(77 years old) reported a bug a while ago.

My point is, why not adapt the severity levels to the competence level of the submitters instead of having to correct them all the time, creating badwill?

Can't the three highest severity levels just be removed? Are they relevant? 

1. Blocker  	"Blocks development and/or testing work"

- Is this even possible?

2. Critical 	"Critical problem that prevents all applications from working"

- Possible, if everyone stopped testing code completely, and also unlikely to be reported by a user. 

3. Major 	"Major loss of functionality for a wide range of applications

- Isn't this just all bugs that has more than $arbitrary_number of applications linked to them? An aggregate, rather than a level?


Then, the severity(or "impact") levels could be:

Critical
High
Medium
Low

This is way easier to understand for normal people.  
Also, the definition of each level should not be all that clear(except maybe critical) either, the levels will be discussed anyway, so it is easier to motivate for the developers to grade down a bug without too much discussion. Because the more people start using wine to actually make a living, the more important it will be to them.
One would think that vague levels would create more discussion, but according to my experience, and with end-users, it seems to work the other way. 

And yes, I know that the bug reporting system is used by the developers internally as well, but do you really use the first two levels so often that you need them(I hope not)? 

//Nicklas