I just realized this: the new issue tracker (https://issuetracker.google.com/) requires login to see any of the issues (so there are no longer any "public" issues per-se) and its robots.txt disallows any crawling. While I appreciate the sentiment behind this (from what I understand the issue tracker contains all the internal Google issues and also issues from Google partners and thus there is a strong case to be made for "secure by default"), I think this is a big blow for Google Appengine / Google Cloud.
Let me explain: when I have an issue, my first reaction is to search on Google. These searches led me more times than I can count to the previous issue trackers pages (on code.google.com) which offered workarounds and replies from Google staff. I could also star the issues which had the double function of me being notified when there were updates / fixes and also as a signal that could be used for prioritizing (ie. it makes sense to first work on the issues with the most stars / comments). All of this is gone with the tracker being inaccessible to crawlers. What I predict will happen due to this move: - using the Google Cloud just became more frustrating since you won't find solutions by searching Google (technically you *could* also search the issue tracker - if you remember to do so) - some sites like StackOverflow will partially fill the void but it will be a less-than-adequate solution: the Google Cloud offerings move very fast, so any information on SO will quickly become outdated. It also doesn't have the "signaling" component (ie. Google can't use it to judge on which issues to work first) and it also doesn't help the users affected by the issue to find out when it was fixed. Loose / Loose. - finally, it will result in a lot of duplicate issues on the issue tracker itself since rather than Google pointing you to the existing issue and you starring / commenting on it, people will just file new issues. What should be done immediately: for select groups of issues (ie. those related to services available publicly) issues should be public, accessible without login and also efforts should be made to make them crawleable by search-engines (such as rendering them without JS, publishing URLs in a sitemap, etc). Attila -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-appengine+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to google-appengine@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-appengine/2e13cba0-79f9-4869-9a7d-a9b90a26c6a2%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
