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At some point in a long living project, you have to declare some bugs are #wontfix. You are just lieing to yourself if you think you will ever get to the end of

At some point in a long living project, you have to declare some bugs are #wontfix. You are just lieing to yourself if you think you will ever get to the end of the bug backlog. It also can become an anchor, the team is focused solely on fixing bugs here and there instead of moving the ball forward (and hopefully fixing more fundamental problems along the way). I've made the call to mass close tickets like this. It's never fun, but sometimes you have to do it. These ticket seem to fall into two buckets. 1) Pre Android 5.x bugs. I can understand why they don't want to invest here. Effort is definitely better spent trying to get more devices onto Android 5.x 2) Feature requests for apps. I bet a lot of these are either on a roadmap for a future version of Android, or are simply never going to be added.

diafygi 12y ago
Then mark them as WontFix with a comment explaining why. Marking Obsolete without comment and restricting further comments is a huge slap in the face to your biggest supporters (those who went through the trouble of trying to contribute positively by filing/commenting/starring the bug).
- mrec 12y ago
  Yup. They did the same thing with Chrome a couple of years back - just had a bot go through and close everything older than some threshold en masse. As you might expect, I don't bother reporting Chrome bugs any more.
  - keithpeter 12y ago
    Suppose the Chrome team closed everything older than some cut-off date but explained why (perhaps on a blog) and encouraged people to open new tickets about issues that carried forward to currently supported versions. Would that gesture have kept you motivated to report bugs?
    - mrec 12y ago
      IIRC there was something (unconvincing) on a blog, and they did (nominally) encourage people to open new tickets for issues they cared about. No, that didn't keep me motivated. Words are cheap; actions speak louder. If they really wanted to encourage people to open tickets, they wouldn't robo-close them. There are a lot of ways they could have avoided that mess. Keepalive anything with recent comment traffic is one that springs to mind, since those comments are often along the lines of "yup, still an issue as of version X.Y.Z" or "Hey, it's been N years, any word on a fix?".
      - drdaeman 12y ago
        Auto-closing is not an issue and could be implemented in community-friendly fashion. Just make a bot post "this ticket is dated, leave a comment if it's still important and revelant" then wait a few days and close only ones that don't get much attention. Simple and user-friendly.
  - bradleyjg 12y ago
    They did the same thing with GWT, except it was AssumedStale.
- zmmmmm 12y ago
  But it's explicitly not a WontFix. It's a "we're sorry, for whatever reason this issue is not getting traction. We are closing it because whatever the issue or reason is, whether it's on our side or the reporter's side, or something else, this problem is not effectively handled by this issue". Closing as WontFix would inspire a thousand proclamations of "Google is never going to fix X!" when they may very well address it in the future. I don't think what Google's done is ideal, I agree they should add a comment. However "Obsolete" is probably better than WontFix unless they really did analyse the problem and explicitly decide not to fix it.
higherpurpose 12y ago
This reminds me. Google has the (rather great) Google Moderator tool - so why aren't they using it on a site where Android fans can ask Google properly for features? Using that "issues" list for features is such a pain. Right now if the community wants a new certain feature or they really hate one of the already implemented features, it has to make a big fuss about it on r/Android, an unofficial feedback channel.
- nailer 12y ago
  Weren't they going to shut down Moderator?
- on_and_off 12y ago
  The purpose of this (arguably horrible) tracker is not to ask for features but to report bugs. I am not sure that Android fans should be their target group for their future developments either. This is a very niche group and I highly doubt that their preoccupations closely match those of the average Android user.
CmonDev 12y ago
"At some point in a long living project, you have to declare some bugs are #wontfix." - that point is called "dying".
jacquesm 12y ago
> At some point in a long living project, you have to declare some bugs are #wontfix. The hell you do. If it was worth reporting it is worth fixing. Bugs are symptoms of underlying trouble and if you care about your product and about your users you fix them. If you don't users will stop reporting bugs, you product will remain buggy and eventually users will move to other, less buggy products. Fix your bugs.
anonymousab 12y ago
>At some point in a long living project, you have to declare some bugs are #wontfix Sure. Those are your absolute failures though, and should be regarded as any other failure by your team. When they're "won't fix because it's icky/not fun/goes against our prior fundamental assumptions", at least.

diafygi 12y ago

Then mark them as WontFix with a comment explaining why. Marking Obsolete without comment and restricting further comments is a huge slap in the face to your biggest supporters (those who went through the trouble of trying to contribute positively by filing/commenting/starring the bug).

mrec 12y ago
Yup. They did the same thing with Chrome a couple of years back - just had a bot go through and close everything older than some threshold en masse. As you might expect, I don't bother reporting Chrome bugs any more.
- keithpeter 12y ago
  Suppose the Chrome team closed everything older than some cut-off date but explained why (perhaps on a blog) and encouraged people to open new tickets about issues that carried forward to currently supported versions. Would that gesture have kept you motivated to report bugs?
  - mrec 12y ago
    IIRC there was something (unconvincing) on a blog, and they did (nominally) encourage people to open new tickets for issues they cared about. No, that didn't keep me motivated. Words are cheap; actions speak louder. If they really wanted to encourage people to open tickets, they wouldn't robo-close them. There are a lot of ways they could have avoided that mess. Keepalive anything with recent comment traffic is one that springs to mind, since those comments are often along the lines of "yup, still an issue as of version X.Y.Z" or "Hey, it's been N years, any word on a fix?".
    - drdaeman 12y ago
      Auto-closing is not an issue and could be implemented in community-friendly fashion. Just make a bot post "this ticket is dated, leave a comment if it's still important and revelant" then wait a few days and close only ones that don't get much attention. Simple and user-friendly.
- bradleyjg 12y ago
  They did the same thing with GWT, except it was AssumedStale.
zmmmmm 12y ago
But it's explicitly not a WontFix. It's a "we're sorry, for whatever reason this issue is not getting traction. We are closing it because whatever the issue or reason is, whether it's on our side or the reporter's side, or something else, this problem is not effectively handled by this issue". Closing as WontFix would inspire a thousand proclamations of "Google is never going to fix X!" when they may very well address it in the future. I don't think what Google's done is ideal, I agree they should add a comment. However "Obsolete" is probably better than WontFix unless they really did analyse the problem and explicitly decide not to fix it.

higherpurpose 12y ago

This reminds me. Google has the (rather great) Google Moderator tool - so why aren't they using it on a site where Android fans can ask Google properly for features? Using that "issues" list for features is such a pain. Right now if the community wants a new certain feature or they really hate one of the already implemented features, it has to make a big fuss about it on r/Android, an unofficial feedback channel.

nailer 12y ago
Weren't they going to shut down Moderator?
on_and_off 12y ago
The purpose of this (arguably horrible) tracker is not to ask for features but to report bugs. I am not sure that Android fans should be their target group for their future developments either. This is a very niche group and I highly doubt that their preoccupations closely match those of the average Android user.

CmonDev 12y ago

"At some point in a long living project, you have to declare some bugs are #wontfix." - that point is called "dying".

jacquesm 12y ago

> At some point in a long living project, you have to declare some bugs are #wontfix. The hell you do. If it was worth reporting it is worth fixing. Bugs are symptoms of underlying trouble and if you care about your product and about your users you fix them. If you don't users will stop reporting bugs, you product will remain buggy and eventually users will move to other, less buggy products. Fix your bugs.

anonymousab 12y ago

>At some point in a long living project, you have to declare some bugs are #wontfix Sure. Those are your absolute failures though, and should be regarded as any other failure by your team. When they're "won't fix because it's icky/not fun/goes against our prior fundamental assumptions", at least.