Closing abandoned bugs

[D. R. Evans]

James Richard Tyrer said the following at 06/14/2009 05:44 PM :
> Dotan Cohen wrote:
>> While triaging bugs for KDE, I come across lots of crashers that are
>> marked NEEDSINFO then abandoned. I propose that someone (me?) post a
>> reminder to the OP that more info is needed after one month's time,
>> and if there is still no response then to close the bug as invalid
>> after yet another month. Ideas?
>>
> Yes, I have long advocated this.  However, I would also send a personal 
> email to the original reporter and then if no reply in a reasonable 
> time, close it as WONTFIX or WFM depending on the reply.  Some of these 

The way in which bugs are closed on b.k.o. often does not reflect reality;
isn't there some way to get some kind of new tag which effectively means
"abandoned"?

Using WONTFIX has a problem: it tells future sufferers "don't bother to
file this, no matter how important it is to you, because we aren't going to
fix it". Also, if someone *does* submit the same bug later, it's likely to
be marked as a dupe without any thought about the fact that the first time
around WONTFIX didn't mean what it normally means.

WFM is sort-of OK... but really that means "I have followed the steps
needed to produce this big and I don't see the bug". But in this case the
fact that NEEDSINFO has been used means (probably) that the right steps
aren't available to be tested, so WFM doesn't seem right. Again, there
needs to be some way to ensure that a new bug report with the same bug
isn't automatically rejected as a dupe.

So while I think the basic idea is fine (and in fact I assumed that
something like this was already standard procedure), I don't think that any
of the current tags sends the right message to people who later look at the
bug report, and would advocate an ABANDONED (or similar) tag.

And really there needs to be some way to resurrect the bug if someone else
experiences the bug and can provide the info that was requested in the when
the original NEEDSINFO tag was applied.

  Doc

-- 
Web:  http://www.sff.net/people/N7DR

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