"Gardening" old bugreports

[Justin Zobel]

Involvement not evolvement.

On Thu, 19 Jan 2023, 10:06 pm Justin Zobel, <justin.zobel at gmail.com> wrote:

> In the regard then it falls to developers with the understanding of the
> codebase to triage these.
>
> However it's clear due to the age of these bugs that most developers don't
> have time or aren't prioritising these reports.
>
> This is why I've volunteered time to try get engagement happening with
> community (the bug reporters) to help confirm these issues still exist and
> if they do, try and encourage evolvement from the project maintainers.
>
> Regards,
>
> Justin
>
> On Thu, 19 Jan 2023, 9:56 pm Nicolas Fella, <nicolas.fella at gmx.de> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Am 19.01.23 um 04:04 schrieb Justin:
>> > Hi Nicolas,
>> >
>> > This has been discussed with Nate Graham directly who has approved
>> > this cleanup of Bugzilla including the messaging behind it.
>>
>> KDE consists of more than Nate tough. We discuss and "review" things in
>> the open.
>>
>> >
>> > I am happy to discuss any concerns that people have around this. I
>> > understand Krita requested we exclude them from any gardening and that
>> > has been done, however this is the only feedback I have received.
>> >
>> > The gardening team aims to find out if the bug reports are still
>> > relevant by involving the users who reported them in determining if
>> > they are still valid. This increases community involvement and helps
>> > KDE as there isn't anywhere near enough manpower to review the
>> > thousands upon thousands of bugs that haven't been touched in years.
>>
>> Anecdotally many people don't like such automated changes being done to
>> their bugreports that don't actually engage with the content of the
>> report.
>>
>> >
>> > The bugs that we are interacting with are ones that have not had any
>> > activity for over 2 years. We are simply trying to reinvigorate
>> > discussion on those bugs to see if they are still valid. If the user
>> > does not reply within the standard 30 day period after a bug is set to
>> > NEEDSINFO, it is automatically closed by the Bug Janitor.
>> >
>> > I am not simply closing bugs, so I do take offense that care is not
>> > applied.
>>
>> Properly "triaging" old reports requires at least some level of
>> understanding of the project, codebase etc. I'm afraid there is no
>> simple solution to that and rule-based approaches aren't good enough.
>> Even taking things like CONFIRMED status or wishlist priority into
>> account assumes that these have actually been consistently applied.
>>
>> >
>> > I will halt it until it is approved by more developers. However if it
>> > is decided that it isn't wanted then the KDE as a whole will need to
>> > entice more people in sorting old bugs individually as it is clearly
>> > not a priority right now for the majority.
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> >
>> > Justin
>> >
>> Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the initiative of cleaning up bugs.
>> But we do need to handle this with a lot of care to avoid it backfiring.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Nico
>>
>>
>> > On 19/1/23 11:05, Nicolas Fella wrote:
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> can we please put the effort of "gardening" old bugreports on hold
>> until
>> >> we figured out whether this is actually something we want to do?
>> Several
>> >> people already expressed concerns about this.
>> >>
>> >> Improperly applied such mass changes can do more harm than good. We may
>> >> close bugreports that are actually still useful just because nobody
>> >> replied on then in a relatively short timeframe.
>> >>
>> >> Properly cleaning up old bugreports is important. However, it requires
>> >> some level of care and expertise to judge whether a bugreport is still
>> >> useful. Judging by the volume of bugreports that is pinged with the
>> same
>> >> copy&paste message this care is not  applied here.
>> >>
>> >> At minimum such initiatives should be announced and discussed before
>> >> doing them, to allow people to give their input on the proposal. I am
>> >> not aware of any such announcement/discussion.
>> >>
>> >> Cheers
>> >>
>> >> Nicolas
>> >>
>>
>
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