Launchpad is changing how privacy is managed so that it is easier to audit and change at the project level. One consequence of this change will be that private bugs cannot be shared by projects. Another change is that marking a bug private will change the direct bug subscribers to ensure further information is not disclosed to unvetted users. In a review of 218 bugs marked private after they were reported, 216 were made private because of one or more comments. The new privacy rules can prevent such bugs from being made private, or from being seen by the contributors who can help fix it. Launchpad staff can hide comment when asked, but that could delay the time personal information is disclosed on Launchpad by minutes, or days.
We would like to solve this problem, but it is not in scope for the Launchpad Purple Squad to work on. We are concerned that the simple actions we can take to address this issue will be prone to abuse. We have some ideas about what can be done, but the discussion often leads to concerns that can only be address by increasing scope. This is my outline of how the Launchpad community could make Launchpad comment better: 1. Extend the rules of who can change the visibility of a comment from Launchpad staff (~registry) to the author of the comment and users in project roles. This simple change (lp:~wallyworld/launchpad/hide-bug-comment-permissions-885672) permits projects and users to manage their data. https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/885672 This single change solves a lot of issues that affect comments: * Hiding spam * Hiding abusive messages * Hiding personal information accidentally revealed * Hiding comments mistakenly added to a bug * Hiding obsolete/irrelevant comments in long conversations But this single change introduces other problems: * Bad UI: http://people.canonical.com/~curtis/hidden-comments.png * No auditing 2. Project owners, drivers, bug supervisors, and security contacts might be see a lot of yellow comments screaming at be looked at. Launchpad staff see this now and it is very distracting. It also requires me to scroll past messages no one wants to read. I think the message body should be collapsed. If I want to see the message, I could expand it using an action in the header. https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/782258 3. The Hide/Unhide comment link is added as a footer to every message. This increases the amount of scrolling I need to do. I do not need to see a repetitive action for each message when the action is rarely needed. This looks very odd for questions that I ask in answers because I see a "This solved my problem" button in the comment body, then a Hide Comment link in the comment footer. Maybe this action could be moved into the comment header? The header is problematic because several uses need to be addressed. * All comments show the display name, Launchpad-Id, and and date * Most show the comment number, maybe merge proposals should too * The solution comment to a question shows a star * We want to show badges next to users affiliated with the project and we now have a means to do it! https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/782253 4. We do not know who hid the comment, or why. I think most hidden comments are spam, followed by comment hidden because they reveal personal information, and lastly comments that are abusive. I assume comment hidden prior to this year were hidden by Launchpad admins, and all since them by Launchpad developers. We cannot assume any of this when every Lp user can hid their own comments. I think we want to record who change the visibility of the comment and reason selected from an approved list we recognise: spam, abuse, personal, mistake, obsolete. 5. Comment numbers are sometimes displayed wrong https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/818456 https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/867593 6. Authoritative comments are not shown or displayed poorly https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/891261 https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/800149 -- Curtis Hovey http://launchpad.net/~sinzui
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