Draft email to maintainers regarding Priority / Severity in Bugzilla

Adam Williamson awilliam at redhat.com
Mon Apr 20 21:12:31 UTC 2009


On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 15:34 -0500, Jerry Amundson wrote:

> > Think about it: what's the actual practical advantage gained by having a
> > field set in Bugzilla which tells you how important the bug is to the
> > reporter, rather than how important it is to the project? Who does that
> > benefit, and how?
> 
> OK, I'm warming up to the idea. Sorry, old habits - I've always spent
> more time reporting than triaging, and I don't see that changing
> anytime soon.
> 
> So, switching to the proposed description:
> 
> Severity is used to describe how bad a bug is for the reporter, in the
> context of the specific component:
> * Urgent: Software is completely unusable, loses data, or the RPM
> won't update properly. Frequent or commonly encountered crashes.
> * High: Loss of important functionality, or usability problem
> producing major frustration. Infrequent and un-reproducible crashes.
> * Medium: Highly visible cosmetic defect, moderate usability problem,
> loss of minor functionality, moderate loss of functionality with
> workaround, or high priority request for enhancement. [default choice]
> * Low: Minor cosmetic defect, minor usability problem, or low priority
> request for enhancement.
> 
> I question the phrase, "... for the reporter ...", since it really
> isn't for the reporter, correct?

Yes, indeed, we should make some revisions to that draft, as James
suggested.

> Can, or will, the voting system come into play? Then reporters, and bz
> account holders (e.g. Fedora/Red Hat *users*) don't lose all of the
> emotional "points" gained by submitting the report in the first place.
> We want reporters (users) to make use of bugzilla.redhat.com, and not
> have them think of it as a black-hole of their personal time, where
> these fields are only controlled by others.  As sort of a way of
> giving something back emotionally, yet also providing feedback that
> could sway the severity one notch higher, if the bug warrants it.

Interesting question...I think it could definitely be something to be
considered by triagers in setting the values, yeah. If a lot of people
vote for a bug that's usually a reasonably reliable indicator that it
affects enough people seriously enough for them to care.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net




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