"Gardening" old bugreports

[Johannes Zarl-Zierl]

Hi,

Am Donnerstag, 19. Jänner 2023, 12:26:08 CET schrieb Nicolas Fella:
> Am 19.01.23 um 04:04 schrieb Justin:
> > 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.

Well, anecdotally you will mostly get feedback from people who don't like it. 
Unless something is exceptionally great, few people will take the time to 
speak out in favor of something that is already happening.

> > 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.

As a maintainer on a small project, I'm quite happy to get an occasional nudge 
on old reports. Yes, I do occasionally go over old reports to see if they are 
still valid, but having somebody else doing this methodically makes sure I 
don't gloss over some bug that could be closed or fixed.

Having this done by someone else without too much internal knowledge is an 
absolute plus in my opinion. After all, if you want to clean up your attic, 
you try to find a helper who does not have the same emotional attachment as 
yourself.


> > 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.

Speaking for KPhotoAlbum, I really appreciate the bugzilla gardening. Thank 
you for doing it!

Cheers,
  Johannes