Bugzilla Upgraded

[Dan Kegel]

Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
> I am sorry, but I think this is a *terrible* idea. Bugzilla
> is already hard enough to use, this will simply kill it but
> for a small select group of hard core users == useless.
> The fact that you can't simply link to it from other pages
> (such as the Fun/ToDo/etc.) without registration should be
> a pretty big hint about it's uselessness.

?  I don't follow.  You *can* link to it.  If a new user
clicks on the link, they should be taken to a registration
page; once they've registered, they should be taken to where
they wanted to go.  And they should never be bothered about
registering again, or at least until the cookie expires.
Doesn't seem too high impact to me.

> As for the spam, I am sorry, I think it's all blown out
> of proportion. I get a *ton* of spam, and I don't think
> it's justifiable to impose such draconian policies on
> _everybody_, simply because you can't deal with spam.
> There are other ways to handle it: Spam Assassin, use a
> different email for wine-related mail, etc.

I've got SpamAssassin, and it's not enough.  Just now I checked
my email, and in the 12 hours since last I checked it, I got about
50 spams that made it *through SpamAssassin*.  I run Mozilla's
bayesian filtering as a second level of defence, and that blocked
all but 12 spams, but it's a big CPU hog on my 450Mhz machine.
Note also that the volume of spam is doubling once every six months
(http://www.esecurityplanet.com/trends/print.php/2175751), which
means that even if it's not a pain for you now, it will be soon.

> Bottom line is that this is a *big* usability step backwards,
> and I would strongly ask that it be reversed. There's no
> evidence that emails in Bugzilla are being harvested, and
> even if they were, there's nothing to suggests tools can't
> deal with them. And for people that still have problems,
> they can use a wine-specific email for it -- but this makes
> it their choice, not something unilaterally imposed of everybody.

Having to use a different email for every purpose is a big
usability step backwards, and it's not something all users
are capable of, believe it or not.

I'm afraid that in the months to come, you'll see anti-spam
proposals that will make the issue of registering to see
the bug database look mild by comparison.
- Dan

-- 
Dan Kegel
http://www.kegel.com
http://counter.li.org/cgi-bin/runscript/display-person.cgi?user=78045