55429 - multiple votes not allowed

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Bugzilla :: Bugzilla-General, defect, P3)

Description

[Len Trigg]

The help page states that multiple votes per bug is allowed (since you only have
a finite number of votes this is OK). However, if you try to allocate more than
one vote to a bug, you get an error messgage.

To reproduce: try to allocate more than 1 vote to a bug :-)

Comment 1

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

You can't multiple vote for anything in the Browser or MailNews product since
that was the choice of mozilla.org due to the silly way the UNCONFIRMED status
works with voting.  Multiple voting works in the Webtools product.

Leaving this open as this page needs to be updated to reflect the fact that not
all installations & products will necessarily have multiple voting capability.

Comment 2

[Len Trigg]

It's not just browser and mailnews -- I tried putting multiple votes in the PSM
category and got the same message. What is the problem with allowing multiple
votes? (And why is it supposedly only a problem with browser and mailnews?)
Shouldn't that problem be fixed instead?

Comment 3

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

Yes, that's to be expected, I just didn't know PSM allowed votes.

The reason is that these products that these allow an UNCONFIRMED status.

UNCONFIRMED will automatically turn into NEW once it has a certain number of
votes (about 3 I think).  Therefore, someone could assign of all their votes to
a bug to confirm it and then remove them.  The intention was that 3 different
people should have to assign their votes.

Removing multiple voting was a kludgy workaround to ensure this.  Better would
be if it checked the number of voters was >= 3.  Even better if there was a
confirmation points system separate from the voting system.

In any case however, I do think whether to allow multiple votes should be an
admin choice.  An admin choice I think should be on for all products in b.m.o I
might add.

Comment 4

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

Confirmation points => bug #56383

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

I don't like multiple votes, because they seem to skew the voting a lot 
(especially since most bugs have 0 votes).  I'm usually more interested in how 
many people have voted for a bug than whatever the current "number of votes" 
measures.

Comment 6

[Len Trigg]

Multiple votes essentially allows the user to specify some degree of importance
(to them) to assign to the bug. Since the total number of votes per person is
fixed, no overall bias towards one person occurs, but obviously some skew
towards particular bugs may (that's the *point* of having multiple votes).

Having multiple bug assignment doesn't preclude getting the information on the
number of people who voted for a bug.

Comment 7

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

Attachment: Suggested fix.

Comment 8

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

Nom 2.12, small fix, doc change only.

Comment 9

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

Attachment: Whoops! Wrong diff!

Comment 10

[Jacob Steenhagen]

A simple doc change certainly should be easy to include in 2.12  :)

If it means anything to you r=jake (I patched this on my existing install and 
all went well).  This will also be clearer if/when bug 31295 gets implimented.

Comment 11

[Tara Hernandez]

barnboy -- another one to your list

Comment 12

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Bug 31295 is in.  This doc change is still relevant.  Checking in...

Comment 13

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

*** Bug 31180 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Tara Hernandez]

Sorry for the spam, but I needed to be able to query for all of these correctly.

Comment 15

[Jacob Steenhagen]

V.

Comment 16

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Moving closed bugs to Bugzilla product