Issues with the issue tracking system

[Philippe Cloutier]

Hi Christoph,

On 2019-11-03 21:10, Christoph Feck wrote:
> Hello Philippe,
>
> let me only correct one of your claims:
>
> On 11/04/19 02:11, Philippe Cloutier wrote:
>> As for the more delicate issue, many reports I filed recently against
>> bugs.kde.org were mishandled. In fact, most of them were, and that is
>> all due to one individual's actions. This can be seen below:
>
> The bug triaging team has several individuals. Myself, I can only spent
> some hours per week to go through bugzilla mails, and cannot comment on
> all new tickets filed. But I do read all mails that are incoming.
>
> When a bug triager resolves an issue, I quickly review their actions,
> and if there is anything wrong with it, I try to correct it, or add a
> comment.
>
> I can imagine that I am not the only triager that reads those
> conversations. If anyone in the community would disagree with the
> actions by bug triagers, I would expect them to intervene. This has
> happened in the past, and will also happen in the future.
>
> So please don't finger-point to individual members in the community
> unless you were talking to them only in private.

Regarding "finger-pointing", I've taken care not to name the person 
responsible for the situation. If the claim you claim to be correcting 
is that a single individual is to blame, I am not going to blame you or 
the whole community for one individual's actions. If you want to blame 
others, feel free, but I'm afraid it will be difficult to support that. 
I would suggest, if there are reviews as you describe, to formalize them 
by recording results.

But in any case, I won't blame anyone for failure to act; an action is 
something which involves responsibility, and since the only problematic 
actions came from that individual, I don't see the need to widen the 
scope at this point.


>
> With the open discussion threads we have on bugzilla, you can be sure
> that many others in the community will follow the discussion and review
> the actions made there. If there was anything wrong with the actions
> made by individuals from the bug triaging team, be assured that others
> would join the discussion or correct the actions.

Well, that's great and I hope you're right, but it would be better to 
start by correcting the actions and reducing the risk that such actions 
occur again than by claiming they will be corrected. I don't want to put 
everyone in the same basket, but that also sounds like burying our heads 
in the sand.


>
> Additionally, you might have noticed that system administrators have
> removed themself from most of the discussion threads you referenced,
> because they don't see the need (or don't have the resources) to
> address the issues you described, if they can be seen as issues at all.
>
I haven't, but you're missing the point. I am not complaining about 
persisting issues. Each organization has more or less manpower, more or 
less issues, and some issues take longer to solve. My point is not that 
there are no actions which help with these issues; it's that there are 
actions which *worsen* the situation. In other words, it's not that 
we're not going forward, the problem is we're going backwards (at least 
for those issues mentioned in this thread, and as far as I can see, for 
those where this individual intervenes, overall).

-- 
Philippe Cloutier
http://www.philippecloutier.com