On 2016-09-15 at 13:24, Russ Allbery wrote: > Abou Al Montacir <abou.almonta...@sfr.fr> writes: > >> Does improve distribution means hiding issues? I don't think it >> is. > > You keep using this term, but I have no idea what you mean by it. > What information do you feel like we're hiding?
I suspect that he feels that closing a bug report without having first tried to address it equals pretending that the problem reported in the bug report does not exist, and thus, represents an attempt to hide the fact that the problem does exist. Given all the surrounding facts (some of which you've cited, quite validly, in this thread), I'm not sure he's right, but - at least from the outside, and as a general matter - the perception does seem to be a reasonable one. Which only means that this represents a potential PR problem, albeit perhaps a minor one. > Not listing that line item in a bug page basically no one looks at > isn't "hiding information" in any meaningful sense that I can see. In the perspective involved, it would be an attempt to hide the fact that the problem was reported, and therefore that the problem apparently existed. > Basically, you're attributing to the Debian project considerably > more resources, expertise, data management, bug classification, and > analysis capabilities than we actually have, and then (apparently) > getting angry and frustrated that we we're (from your perspective) > somehow withholding those capabilities from this bug specifically. > But that's not what's happening at all! We have only a tiny fraction > of the resources that you seem to think we have, and we're just > trying to be explicit about what we can and can't do rather than > having people's bug reports quietly disappear with no response. I suspect that, from his perspective, closing the bug report _makes_ that report "disappear with no response" - or, at least, that it makes it do so to a greater extent than leaving it open with no answer would do. "Bug report filed, remains open indefinitely with no response" comes across as "no one cares", true - but "bug report filed, closed without attempting to fix" comes across as rejection of the report, and therefore, of the idea that the report represents a valid problem. It's easy to see how the latter is a stronger negative than the former. (Also, the former can more easily lead to "existing bug report discovered, attempt is now made to fix it" or to "existing bug report discovered, further information added which may be useful for a fix" than can the latter.) Which is probably to say that eliminating, or at the least reworking, the 'general' package as a target for bug reports would probably be an improvement if done properly. I'm not terribly fond of it as an idea at first glance, but the logic behind it does seem fairly strong. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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