Autoresolving our 554 old UNCONFIRMED bugs

[wino at piments.com]

On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 15:01:33 +0200, Molle Bestefich  
<molle.bestefich at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dan Kegel wrote:
>> We have 554 unconfirmed bugs older than 90 days.
>> Most of these are likely to be obsolete.
>> It would be really easy to write a script to
>> ping the people who submitted those bugs,
>> and ask them to update the bug if it's still valid.
>> If there's no reply in two weeks, we could mark
>> the bug 'resolved abandoned'.
>>
>> Detailed proposal, including the text of the message to be
>> sent, are at http://kegel.com/wine/qa/autoresolve.html
>
 from that link:

If you're still interested in this bug,
please click on the following link:
%url%
and add a comment saying you're still interested,
giving more information if you have it
(e.g. whether it still happens with the latest version of Wine).


This may help to get some fresh input on old bugs and for that it may be  
of value but I think the basic attitude here is wrong.

It is not a case of whether one user is still "interested" , if there is a  
bug it is a bug , it needs confirming or refuting (hence unconfirmed , ie  
never looked at.)

There may be many others who have the same issue but have not reported a  
bug since a bug is already open. If the original poster has lost interest  
(after seeing the bug ignored for six months this is very likely) this  
does not mean others are not interested .

Also once bugs are marked as "resolved" in any sense they certainly wont  
even get read by anyone likely to really resolve the issue.

There is also the strong likelyhood that after a long delay the original  
poster may have had to change their email address due to spam flooding or  
a multitude of other reasons and they will never even get the "ping".

Is there any reason to think that a bug will get more attention if it is  
refreshed?

"Resolved - abandonned" does not seem any more valid than marking  
"Resolved - Unconfirmed"

In short, sending a ping to those who can still be contacted may be a good  
way to get some updated info and presumably some closures by the bug  
poster but is probably not helpful if it marks unresolved issues as  
resolved.

;)