[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] Allow comments on closed bugs?

[Heiko Baums]

Am Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:33:48 -0600
schrieb Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com>:

> Mr Heiko, I know you feel you have a vested interest in this topic,
> but you're just adding useless noise to the discussion. This is quite
> ironic as this is EXACTLY what you claim will not happen were we to
> allow comments on closed bugs.

I don't think that I'm adding useless noise. I said what I thought
about how some of my bugs have been handled, how this is taken by me
and that I was quite angry about that. And I gave arguments and also
suggestions. And of course I respond to some e-mails or another.

And my concerns are not about comments on closed bugs. This was only
one of many suggestions other people made to reduce such
misunderstandings and to improve the bug handling.

Other good suggestions and alternatives have been mentioned, too, also
by other people. But I think many good ideas have been given.

What I wish is just, that bugs will be taken more seriously even if
there are some invalid bug reports which are caused by a wrong
configuration and even if some bug reports are written by users with a
not so good knowledge. This can't be avoided anyway.

I generally don't care how this is done, if it's done by commenting on
closed bugs, by the possibility on reopen bugs at once without sending
a request or whatever. My wish is, that the reporter first get's a
chance to respond and give more details before a bug is closed as
"works for me" or the like. And if a bug is closed the reason for
closing should first be given in a comment.

Any other things are just technical details which can help for a better
bug handling.

And I think that it can't hurt if you also listen to the user's
arguments and discuss with the users instead of telling them that their
comments are useless noise. One more point which let me doubt of the
user-friendliness of not all but at least some (most likely only a few)
developers.

Of course the technical details about the actual implementation of some
features can be discussed private between the developers.

I have indeed read these statements from developers: "Arch is/was from
developers for developers", "the developers only maintain, what they
want", and that they don't like or care about the "normal" users very
much.

And that's just not what I'm used to from other distros.

And don't mistake it. I don't say that every developer is like this.
And I don't say that Arch is bad, that the developers are unfriendly
and not helpful in general, don't make good jobs, etc. But this had to
be said.

I think becoming a bit more open-minded towards the users would be more
important than discussing about commenting on closed bugs which could
be done nevertheless.

Heiko