Re: bugs that have not been replied-to on list

Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:

> by nagging people - if we simply had a dashboard or an email interface
> (think of the buildfarm dashboard and the status email reports it
> provides to both developers and animalowners) to make the issue more
> visible I think most of the problem of "no reply at all" would (mostly)
> "solve" itself.

As it is, some people on -bugs (myself included despite my lack of much
knowledge of Pg's code base) try to keep track of lost/abandoned reports
and follow them up or poke people who might be able to track down an
issue. Having a tracker would make this considerably easier.

As it is, I think people on -bugs do a pretty decent job of first
contact response (prompt for more details, explain when it's not a bug,
point them at a suitable place to ask some random question, etc) and of
helping people with simpler issues. It's really just that a mail
interface doesn't lend its self well to tracking the status of many
ongoing investigations with long lags, so after that first contact some
of them *do* get lost if there's no follow-up from the poster.

Because of the non-response rate to follow-up requests, IMO any tracker
would *have* to allow triage folks to place bugs in a NEEDINFO / INVALID
/ NOTABUG state, and to report on bugs with no activity in >n days/weeks
so this can be done quickly and easily for non-responsive reporters.

--
Craig Ringer

Tech-related writing: http://soapyfrogs.blogspot.com/