We have a lot of bug reports that can't be reproduced because of the lack of information. Quite often, the initial reporter never comes back to check for answers.
These bugs are then usually flagged as active and lie in the queue forever (or at least for a long time), because no one can do anything about them because of the lack of information.
My proposal is to introduce a new 'status' field for them to be able to differentiate between active bugs on which one can actually work and bugs for which the initial reporter first needs to give more details.

I'd propose "active (more information needed)", "active (waiting for details)" or just "more information needed" as a name for the new status field.

Comments

chx’s picture

chx commented

VERY nice idea. Now, only if there would an automated email about this to the original poster... (/me is daydreaming)

dww’s picture

dww
we/he/they
commented

i was *just* wishing i had exactly such a status for http://drupal.org/node/102530 ;)
+1 from me.

all we need is to finalize what we call it and it's a trivial setting to enable it, no project.module code needs to change.

cheers,
-derek

greggles’s picture

greggles
he/him
Primary language English
Location Denver, Colorado, USA
commented

some bug systems I've seen use a "new" vs. "confirmed" system.

how about moving "active" to "active (new)" and then creating an "active (confirmed)" status?

dww’s picture

dww
we/he/they
commented

that's an interesting approach, but i don't think it conveys the point. if someone reports/requests something, and i ask "wtf are you talking about?", it's no longer new, but it's not confirmed, either.

more importantly, just because it's new doesn't mean i shouldn't look at it. i often (nearly always) do the front-line care on the project* issue queues, seeing what people are saying. i can't ignore an issue just because it's not confirmed. however, if someone (or me) sets it to "needs more info", it means i can safely ignore it again until someone provides that info. in fact, i'd say "needs more info" could even disappear from the default view of status values.

it's sort of analagous to "patch needs work". it means "i looked at this, but someone who cares about this has to spend more effort before it's worth my time to look at this again"... we use "needs work" vs. "needs review" quite effectively, and i think we can accomplish something similar with "needs info" and "active"...

in fact, *ALL THE TIME* in the support world for my day job, someone "reports a bug" but provides so little info we have no idea wtf they think the problem is. we'd definitely use "active (needs more information)" a lot for our own issue tracking... so i'd be tempted (independently of whatever we install on d.o) to make this status one of the defaults in project_issue.module.

greggles’s picture

greggles
he/him
Primary language English
Location Denver, Colorado, USA
commented

Perhaps my comment was somewhat orthogonal - I see your points very clearly now that we need a "needs more info" field (and I even like that name). I also agree with the idea to "remove needs more info from the default search/list".

dww’s picture

dww
we/he/they
commented
Assigned: Unassigned » dww
Status: Active » Fixed

added setting and gave users the permission to use it. ;)
since it's not in the hard-coded list of defaults, it just won't show up unless you query for it.

cheers,
-derek

Frando’s picture

Frando commented

cool, thanks!

Anonymous’s picture

(not verified) commented
Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)