On 09/30/2011 07:17 PM, todd rme wrote:
If they don't have time to respond to all the bug reports, what makes you think they would have time to respond to just as many, if not more, emails? You would only be increasing the amount of stuff they need to read, further decreasing the amount of time they have to respond to bugs, not to mention fix them. In the end you would end up with the same situation: tons of emails left unanswered.
The main problem is not how many messages, either those sent to this mailing list or to the bug tracker, are left unanswered; it's how much time is being wasted on a futile task. This problem is being incorrectly depicted as one which only affects developers but in reality it affects every person involved, including users.
You claimed that developers waste time browsing some messages. Yet, it should also be noted that filing bug reports, particularly when providing every piece of information which may be of any interest, does demand quite a bit of time and energy from the users. In fact, a bug report which is left untouched by any developer ends up being a complete waste of time for the user who submitted it, while not affecting any developer in the process. If you hold this in consideration while you browse through KDE's bug tracker you will get an idea of how much time the current bug tracking policy is forcing users to waste. This, as this thread demonstrates, is a considerable source of frustration. So, if there is really an intention to cut on how much time is being wasted with the current process then why not start where it really is being entirely wasted?
And meanwhile it should also be taken under consideration the impact that this way of managing user contributions has on how the public perceives this project, particularly how community-drive it appears to be. If developers intentionally ignore both the bug tracker and the mailing list and if users are forced to deal with a process which is futile at best and Kafkaesque at worse then the ability to attract new users and preserve the current ones will be undermined. And although this might appeal to some developers as it might save them a hand full of minutes each day, it only aggravates the current problem and it tends to do a lot of harm in the long run.
Rui Maciel
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