Bold bug triaging - issues with contacting a LP user

I had. :slight_smile:

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Hello. Sorry for the late reply.
I will bring this to the attention of the other CC members.

If somebody is closing bugs, the least we can expect of them is to be accountable for that, and reply when we ask for a reason. I like a lot what @rbasak says, maybe they just donā€™t know how ā€œincompleteā€ works, so we have to be nice here and assume they just want to help the community, until we prove thatā€™s not the case.
And deactivating an account that doesnā€™t reply sounds like a very reasonable approach to solve similar problems, I will ask how that works.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We will have a meeting on the third Thursday of this month. You are all welcome to join us if you want to talk more about this, or have any other concerns.

pura vida

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Thanks elopio - unlikely to be able to make it as Iā€™m travelling usually when you meet.

@gunnarhj
@rbasak

Following up a bit I happened upon

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Responses#Release_has_reached_End_of_Life_.28EOL.29

Which is probably what the guy should be doing rather than Invalid - pretty much the same outcome, but a bit less in your face giving people 60 days to comment (assuming relevant people are subscribed to ā€˜bugā€™)

Yeah, maybeā€¦ The problem as far as Iā€™m concerned is that he is not available here - or anywhere else - to talk about his actions in those cases when people have reacted. Such discussions might lead to a modified behavior going forward. As it appears now, he sits in a bubble and does things - some good things, apparently, and a few less good things.

ack - thatā€™s really a seperate issue in my mind

The account has been suspended, after many attempts to contact them.

Hopefully, when trying to access their account they will try to contact the launchpad admins or come to this forum, so we can talk.

A less happy alternative would be for them to just create another account. So if you see somebody with a different account following the same pattern when closing bugs, please let us know.

pura vida.

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In an effort to work through the 1483 open Files bugs I have been closing quite a few for being EOL (which I havenā€™t always been able to test) but have said in my closing comments that they should be re-opened if they can be reproduced on 18.04 or Cosmic. I hope this kind of practice is OKā€¦

The text in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Responses#Release_has_reached_End_of_Life_.28EOL.29 is a recent incantation based on what Iā€™ve been using for the past year or so.

What that page doesnā€™t yet mention is that sometimes we do jump straight to Invalid instead of Incomplete. Sometimes itā€™s out of necessity (the bug has too many attributes to qualify for automatic expiry), and sometimes itā€™s just out of frustration/impatience. This has turned out to be quite uncontroversial, with only around one in every few hundred bug reporters complaining. And when people do complain itā€™s usually about the fact that you commented at all, and not a valid complaint: ā€œitā€™s been 10 years, thanks for nothingā€.

My personal rule of thumb is to use Invalid if:

  1. There is no obvious evidence the bug is still valid; and
  2. The Ubuntu release is past EOL by more than one cycle.

Using Invalid in this case should be no cause for concern. In the rare case when a bug does come back to life itā€™s a trivial status change.

Having done this for thousands of bugs so far I am no longer afraid of using Invalid in some cases, in place of Incomplete.

Since I started this thread, which is about a case with the extra ingredient that the LP member had made himself unconnectable, Iā€™d like to ask @ads20000 and @vanvugt:

When you close that kind of bugs, do you subscribe to them so you get notified if someone complains and with that can reverse the action if motivated? Under that condition, I for one have no objections.

AFAIK - please correct me if Iā€™m wrong - a bug reporter or other bug subscriber canā€™t reopen an invalidated bug unless they are a member of ~ubuntu-bugcontrol or the upstream project.

Generally Iā€™m already subscribed to the whole package and review all the bug mail each day, yes. Thatā€™s not necessary though ā€“ the user should be told to reopen it themselves. We need to spread the workload and get other people to do things as much as possible, particularly if they are the main ones with the interest in the bug.

I think your assumption is wrongā€¦ Regular users can and do reopen Invalid bugs all the time. Often not even their own bugs, which is surprising given that closed bugs are hidden from search. Or am I confusing Invalid for Expired?

Possibly I was confusing Invalid with Wonā€™t Fix. Regular users canā€™t change status if someone sets Wonā€™t Fix.

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