Tom Berger <[email protected]> writes: > I think that there's a lot of value in getting more people to help > with fixing bugs, but I wonder if that value outweighs the problems > with adding notes like that. > > 1. Bug comments are primarily there for adding information that > pertains to the bug itself - how is the bug manifested, how can it be > reproduced, how should it be fixed, how can the fix be verified, > etc'... Any "meta" comment you add detracts from the value of bug > comments and makes it more difficult to find the relevant information, > so if at all possible, it should be avoided. > > 2. Many people are subscribed to bug mail and get notified whenever a > new comment is posted. Any comment that's not directly relevant to the > discussion of the bug is for them as good as spam. It requires a bit > of effort on their part to read and understand and leaves them > irritated when they realize they didn't gain any new information that > they find helpful. This is often unavoidable, but whenever we can we > should try and avoid doing that. > > You mention the 1000/10/1 rule which I think is very true in this > case, but it has other consequences which you didn't mention: whenever > you post a comment like that you get the attention of 1 potential > contributor at the cost of annoying 1000 users who are unlikely to > participate in development. > > Learning how to work with the Launchpad codebase and contributing a > fix requires quite a lot of effort. The essence of spam is when you > try to elicit a large expenditure without yourself making an > investment that is proportional. A friendlier model is one where you > are willing to invest more when you seek high-bandwidth participation. > For economical reasons, you must do that less often, which results in > lower volume correspondence. That, in turn, forces you to choose > "targets" with a higher likelihood of success, to optimize ROI. I > think that getting people to participate in development is better done > by identifying individual users and user groups which we think are > likely to want to jump in, go after them (politely) and offer help. > This requires a lot more effort on our part, but we're likely to get a > much better success ratio than 1000:1.
Half agree? I think you've got a very good point, in that I was overeager in adding those new comments -- their "distraction cost" is too high. But in the first response to a report, it is still very worthwhile to solicit coding help (except when it's obvious that the reporter is not a good candidate). That is, the real penalty here is the additional email/comment. Adding an additional "noise event" should be avoided, you're absolutely right. But in a response comment that one is making anyway (such as the two Danilo made in those examples I gave), it's useful to follow the https://dev.launchpad.net/BugHandling guidelines. (Maybe that's what you were saying too? I wasn't sure.) -Karl _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-dev Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-dev More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
