Bugzilla semantics: marking bugs as triaged

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2009-07-17 at 17:59 -0400, Christopher Beland wrote:

> Well, I was trying to clearly articulate an alternative that would *not*
> involve a Triaged flag, only the three states NEW, TRIAGED, and
> CONFIRMED.

Ah, I see - sorry, I'd lost the thread.

> I probably won't be at the meeting, and I don't have a strong opinion
> about whether to use a flag or a state.  The upside of using a flag is
> that "triaged" and "confirmed" can be indicated separately.  The
> downside is that certain UI stuff that's geared toward states would need
> to be improved to also indicate flags in order to maintain convenience
> for triagers.  (Which might be useful to do anyway, since NEEDINFO
> visibility is convenient for triagers.)

Yeah, lack of visibility in search results (for e.g.) is a bit of a pain
with keywords. (I'd rather use a keyword than a flag, here; flag doesn't
fit the use case).

> The upside of using only states is that there are fewer permutations to
> worry about.  The downside is that procedurally, any bug that is
> confirmed-but-not triaged would just need to be triaged on the spot when
> it was marked CONFIRMED.
> 
> > Bugs without sufficient information have not been triaged. Ensuring
> > sufficient information is present in the report is one of the most
> > important parts of triage.
> 
> Well, I agree that *requesting* missing information is an important part
> of triage.  I suppose there are some bugs that you need an explanation
> from the reporter before you can make heads or tails of them.  But
> normally, once the checklist has been completed and a request for any
> missing info has been filed, I pretty much consider the triage over.
> Either the reporter will add the requested info and the package
> maintainer can take a look, or they won't and it will continue to be
> marked NEEDINFO.  If they unset the NEEDINFO flag without supplying the
> requested info, or if their reply indicates further triage action is
> needed (e.g. it's now clear the bug is reported against the wrong
> component) I'll get an email, so in the meantime there's no need for the
> bug to show up on my "not triaged" list.  I assume it's clear to
> maintainers they might not be able to take action on bugs marked
> NEEDINFO, though in many cases they can.

Well, I find that as a matter of course on many bugs, you have to go
through a round or two of interaction with the reporter to make sure the
information is fully available. But overall I don't really disagree,
you're right that requesting info is the important step.

-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
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