Update on bug system for OpenJDK (web-discuss)

[David Holmes]

Steve,

Steve Poole said the following on 05/30/11 19:10:
> On 27/05/11 18:47, Georges Saab wrote:
>> The 'noise' problem is real and currently Oracle funds a number of 
>> people who contribute time
>> and effort to the thankless task of weeding through the noise.   But 
>> there has to be a better way
>> of handling it than the current one.
> I assume that you end up pointing a lot of these requests to some 
> external documentation?   I'm thinking that if OpenJDK's landing page 
> included pointers to FAQs , user discussion mailing lists etc that would 
> help reduce the amount of noise.

Such pointers already exist and are ignored by many bug reporters.

>> I wonder if part of the issue is the current lack of distinction 
>> between bug reports from end users,
>> developers in general, and developers with 'skin in the game on OpenJDK'?
>>
>> Perhaps the first step is to have separate places to report issues if 
>> you are an end user
>> versus a Java developer (and making it clear which is which), and then 
>> if there are still
>> an overwhelming number of 'I am a CS student learning Java and could 
>> you please do
>> my homework' coming into the developer bug database, look at how to 
>> raise the bar?
> I'd rather have a system where anyone can raise issues without regard to 
> any role.  If there is too much "noise"  then steps can be taken  to 
> help redirect people to the right place.   End users  asking questions - 
> however naive  or incoherent - are still part of the community.   Having 
> said that I think we need to be pro-active - see my comment above.

We already know that the noise exists and is extreme. Naive questions 
don't belong in bug reports they belong on mailing lists (not current 
openJDK ones) or in forums. As a developer who does a lot of bug triage 
I do not want a system that will suddenly inundate me with bogus reports 
(the bar is often too low as it is!).

So I'm all for role-based access control on the bug system.

Regards,
David Holmes

>>     /GES
>>
>> On 27 maj 2011, at 08.07, David Herron wrote:
>>
>>> I have to say that while what Volker said is compelling, I know that 
>>> David Holmes is speaking the truth. Way-back-when I saw some of that 
>>> stuff coming in and much of it was more user error or confusion and 
>>> needing education on proper use of the API rather than it being a bug.
>>>
>>> The team when we were still at Sun had a system letting them 
>>> construct semi canned semi customized responses in many cases, and 
>>> give proper disposition to the entries. But they did have a serious 
>>> problem in keeping up.
>>>
>>> But, one can plausibly imagine a crowd sourced system that handled 
>>> both actual bug reports and the other stuff like "I'm confused about 
>>> method Y ...".  I always thought those questions and answers were a 
>>> potential source of a crowd sourced knowledge base of typical 
>>> confusion and answers.
>>>
>>> David Herron
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On May 27, 2011, at 5:21 AM, David Holmes<David.Holmes at oracle.com>  
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Volker Simonis said the following on 05/27/11 20:11:
>>>>> I think it shouldn't be only writable by anyone - it should be
>>>>> possible to enter bugs which will become visible instantly.
>>>>> It wouldn't make sense to make the new system writable only by
>>>>> contributors taking into account that the old system at bugs.sun.com
>>>>> is already writable by everybody. But the way how bugs.sun.com
>>>>> currently handles new entries which are first kept private and then
>>>>> only published after a certain amount of time without any notification
>>>>> to the submitter is at least insane. That way you can not enter a bug
>>>>> and then start a discussion about it because you simply don't have a
>>>>> reference to it. Instead you have to manually poll the system to see
>>>>> when it finally appears publicly.
>>>> The lack of notification may be "insane" but the process isn't 
>>>> insane once you see the volume of crud that gets submitted as bug 
>>>> reports. The current process certainly has some issues but you need 
>>>> a first-level filtering mechanism of some kind.  Most bug reports 
>>>> don't come from contributors, they come from users.
>>>>
>>>> So I'd say that contributors should be able to make entries to the 
>>>> bug system, but users should still submit via some other front-end.
>>>>
>>>> David Holmes
>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 9:06 PM, Michael Klishin
>>>>> <michael.s.klishin at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>>>> mark.reinhold at oracle.com escribió:
>>>>>>> I completely agree. The primary users of this bug system are OpenJDK
>>>>>>> Contributors. It will be readable by anyone, of course, but I'm not
>>>>>>> sure it should be writable by anyone other than Contributors.
>>>>>> Mark,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think that if the bugs system will be read-only for "regular 
>>>>>> developers", they will post their issues
>>>>>> on various mailing lists or won't post them anywhere at all, and 
>>>>>> in the end it will be significantly harder for everyone, including 
>>>>>> contributors
>>>>>> and Oracle employees, to keep track of issues.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Given that OpenJDK is a pretty large project with many moving 
>>>>>> parts, that would be a loss-loss situation for everyone, IMO.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My 2¢.--
>>>>>> MK
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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