[Bugsquad] BugSquad KMail Triage

[A. Spehr]

> 
> On Tuesday 21 October 2008, mario tuling wrote:
> > hm... what do we do about wishes?
> > they are much harder than normal bugs. and could produce flamewars ^^
> 
> I'd say leave them unless a developer tells you what to do about a wish. 

Wishes are interesting. In my brief experience, if you can clearly state
why something is a bad idea, you can close it and they won't be unhappy.
Especially if you propose an alternate solution or give a valid reason.
This does require work on your part: you have to know what you're talking
about. Typically I've gone and bugged developers and asked them this sort
of information, and then I go and write it up nicely. I guess it saves them
some time, and I gain more knowledge about various aspects/software/etc.

Obviously you have to be diplomatic! 



If it looks like it's heading to a flamewar. Tell them to take it to a
mailing list, as that's where some things should be discussed. 
And then don't reply. 

If it isn't mailing list appropriate, you can escalate to a developer and
have them comment. If you've just gotten flamey towards them, you can always
get someone else on bugsquad to reply and take over, should further discussion
be needed. If it does look this dicey, you probably should leave it, though.



If something is a good idea, then leave it. If you know enough to know that
it would be easy, you might as well mark it a "junior job". JJ is what we 
used to have, what do we have now? If you don't know this, you can't mark
it though! And presumably someone looking through wishes for a place to start
coding can figure this out pretty quickly. So be conservative. 

The easiest thing to triage for wishes is duplicates. Or if it has already
been implemented. I have no clue what the pim wishes look like, but if you
glance through the subject headers looking for things that look like they
might have been done, you'll find things. ;)

Those are the safest closes...


Following this line of thought, as you look through wishes, if you find 
something where the subject could be written much clearer, change it! That
makes it easier to eyeball for dups/done. I think this is important, it raises
the caliber of the wishes.


Now these are just my thoughts, others have much more experience. Furthermore,
Lubos long ago actually promised to write up something on how to deal with 
wishes. So I'm cc'ing this to him to see what his comments on it are. ;)
I think traditionally he's been the one to most often mark things JJ.


May the bugs be gone!

Alex