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Code review comment for lp:~brian-murray/launchpad/bug-556489-distro-struct-sub

bug-556489-distro-struct-sub
Merge into devel

Revision history for this message

Deryck Hodge (deryck) wrote on 2010-08-04:

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 5:11 PM, Robert Collins
<email address hidden> wrote:
> So, to make sure I understand:
> - a distro without a bug supervisor does not permit structural subscription?
>
> We are expecting many more distros though - derived distros are being worked on.
>
> I have no problem with being opinionated; I'd -much- rather we warned
> than stopped people - simply because if we prohibit something we
> *will* get bug reports that its prohibited (the same as we get users
> who were not warned about the firehose - who were *invited* into doing
> something silly).
>

Right, but we get bug reports regardless of what we do. :-) The
threat of bug reports makes me neither fear nor regret the change. ;)

The real question is "should we allow users to subscribe to all of a
distributions bugs?" I think for distributions with a large number of
users and bugs this makes no sense. Brian's choice to limit this to
distros that have defined a bug supervisor seems about the best check
we have for "is this a large distro?" Not perfect, sure, but not bad
either.

The cases of someone wanting to subscribe to every bug email for
everything in a distro are few -- people like Brian and the Debian PTS
-- and all of these cases have an option to get at the notifications
(subscribe to mailing list or join bug supervisor team), and in the
common case, we prevent people from getting themselves into trouble
and giving Launchpad a bad reputation for spamming people. Also,
we're not changing anyone's current subscription, just preventing them
in the future. We're only going to clean up deactivated accounts once
this work lands.

People don't read warnings. There is already a warning.

Finally, I really don't understand why this change is a big deal. In
the world of Launchpad, this is a very minor area of potential
complexity and confusion, and it brings great benefit in terms of
sparing less-experienced users getting spammed by the bug tracker.
It's well known and well documented that, despite our best efforts,
people end up subscribing to all of Ubuntu's bugs. Why not prevent
that and be done with it? :-)

Cheers,
deryck

--
Deryck Hodge
https://launchpad.net/~deryck
http://www.devurandom.org/

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 5:11 PM, Robert Collins
<robertc@robertcollins.net> wrote:
> So, to make sure I understand:
>  - a distro without a bug supervisor does not permit structural subscription?
>
> We are expecting many more distros though - derived distros are being worked on.
>
> I have no problem with being opinionated; I'd -much- rather we warned
> than stopped people - simply because if we prohibit something we
> *will* get bug reports that its prohibited (the same as we get users
> who were not warned about the firehose - who were *invited* into doing
> something silly).
>

Right, but we get bug reports regardless of what we do. :-)  The
threat of bug reports makes me neither fear nor regret the change. ;)

The real question is "should we allow users to subscribe to all of a
distributions bugs?"  I think for distributions with a large number of
users and bugs this makes no sense.  Brian's choice to limit this to
distros that have defined a bug supervisor seems about the best check
we have for "is this a large distro?"  Not perfect, sure, but not bad
either.

The cases of someone wanting to subscribe to every bug email for
everything in a distro are few -- people like Brian and the Debian PTS
-- and all of these cases have an option to get at the notifications
(subscribe to mailing list or join bug supervisor team), and in the
common case, we prevent people from getting themselves into trouble
and giving Launchpad a bad reputation for spamming people.  Also,
we're not changing anyone's current subscription, just preventing them
in the future.  We're only going to clean up deactivated accounts once
this work lands.

People don't read warnings.  There is already a warning.

Finally, I really don't understand why this change is a big deal.  In
the world of Launchpad, this is a very minor area of potential
complexity and confusion, and it brings great benefit in terms of
sparing less-experienced users getting spammed by the bug tracker.
It's well known and well documented that, despite our best efforts,
people end up subscribing to all of Ubuntu's bugs.  Why not prevent
that and be done with it? :-)

Cheers,
deryck

-- 
Deryck Hodge
https://launchpad.net/~deryck
http://www.devurandom.org/

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