The Future Of Resolutions

[MattyT]

On Sat, 2004-01-24 at 19:50, Gervase Markham wrote:

> Is the semantic difference between this and WORKSFORME great enough to 
> justify having two resolutions? I think it's important that we keep the 
> default set as small as practicable; the more there are, the more people 
> will be scared of choosing the wrong one.

Anyone qualified to resolve bugs is qualified to make these simple
distinctions.  The point is to make the set easier to use, not only for
the resolver, but also for everyone else involved in the bug report, and
anyone who wants to gather proper statistics later.

It is far closer to FIXED than WORKSFORME, since NOWWORKS is a
"successful" resolution, whereas WORKSFORME is an "unsuccessful" one.

WORKSFORME is entirely the wrong resolution here, and part of the reason
for introducing this is to avoid people misusing it.  WORKSFORME is only
for stuff that could never be reproduced, and I'm thinking of trying to
get it prohibited for confirmed bugs.

> I'd just call this "FEATURE". After all, "it's not a bug, it's a 
> feature" is a well-known phrase. So let's call it that.

That should be fine.

> > NOTWORTHIT It should be fixed in a perfect world, but this isn't a
> > perfect world, so it won't be. (probably should be deleted by OSS)
> In what way is this different to the WONTFIX that you hate so much? ;-)

WONTFIX is bad because it is ambiguous and as such has overloaded
meanings.  Why won't you fix it?  In particular, WONTFIX is currently
used for NOTWORTHIT and FEATURE on various systems.  Splitting these off
makes the reason clearer.

> In my view the default Bugzilla settings should encourage good 
> development practice; and I think that good development practice doesn't 
> resolve bugs like this. We learnt that with REMIND, LATER etc. I say we 
> ditch this one.

It's there for closed projects where there are a closed set of
contributors under the control of a central entity, where such decisions
can be made.  Clearly this is a large demographic for Bugzilla.  I never
suggested this should be used for OSS projects, quite the opposite.

My initial intention with this was to demonstrate possibilities to
administrators rather than the final product, similar to the way we do
TestProduct etc.  However in this case you're probably right in that
administrators may well tend to stick with what they have, unlike
TestProduct.  So it might be worth leaving NOTWORTHIT as a suggestion
for closed projects in the Bugzilla Guide.

> I'd prefer NOINFO - "this bug cannot be dealt with due to missing and 
> unobtainable information." MISSING on its own isn't very descriptive. 
> "What's missing?" MISSINGINFO might be OK.

Part of the concern is making it look nice (and descriptive if possible)
using the first four letters that appear on the bug list.

> Then someone else should be made responsible. Again, this is not a 
> _resolution_. I also think that, unlike some of the other choices, many 
> non-Americans will have trouble understanding this one.

This is a joke.

-- 
         Matthew Tuck: Software Developer & All-Round Nice Guy        
 My Short Autobiography: 1985 Grade Bin Monitor 1990 Class Clown Award
1992 Awarded Most Likely To Spontaneously Combust 1996 Crowned Galactic
         Emperor 1998 Released From Smith Psychiatric Hospital