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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 bi

by 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.

by diafygi 12y ago

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.