1269939 - On bug with NI:myself, there is no way to add another NI without removing myself

Status: NEW

(bugzilla.mozilla.org :: Extensions, defect)

Description

[Gerald Squelart (he/him) (not at Mozilla since 2022-09-15)]

STR:
- Go to any bug.
- If not already done, check 'Need more information from <myself>' and click 'Save Changes'.
Notice that under the comment box, 'Clear the needinfo' is checked, and 'Need more info' is unchecked.
- Uncheck 'Clear the needinfo request for <myself>'.

Actual:
'Need more information' becomes 'Redirect my needinfo request to...'.

Expected:
'Need more information' stays as-is, so that I can add someone without removing myself.

If I wanted to redirect the needinfo, I'd usually just leave 'Clear the needinfo request for <myself>' checked.

It seems this comes from bug 1239838, where the goal was to redirect an NI without changing the requester.
If there really is a need for that 'redirect' (that cannot be satisfied by checking both 'clear myself' and 'add someone'), then I think it should be a separate 3rd choice.

Comment 1

[Gerald Squelart (he/him) (not at Mozilla since 2022-09-15)]

Or another way of course, whatever works best for all possible scenarios.

Comment 2

[:glob ✱]

i experimented with a 3rd choice, but this resulted in a lot of UI overhead/noise for something that is an infrequent action.

perhaps the simplest thing to do is to not redirect needinfo requests where the requester is the same as the requestee - redirecting a needinfo flag you set yourself is the same as setting a new one.

Comment 3

[Gerald Squelart (he/him) (not at Mozilla since 2022-09-15)]

Just thinking of another scenario (something I could have used today), which may influence your solution here:

I'd like to be able to become the requester of a request to myself!
For example, someone requested something from me, I've answered, but I'd still like to keep a live request (as a reminder to self to come back to the bug), but the original requester doesn't need to know about it anymore.

The workaround at the moment would be to first clear the needinfo, and then re-add myself in a separate action, so it's not a big deal if you don't think it should be implemented.
And If that's a totally different issue, I'm happy to open a separate bug.

Comment 4

[:glob ✱]

(In reply to Gerald Squelart [:gerald] from comment #3)
> I'd like to be able to become the requester of a request to myself!

that use-case is one that we discussed, and one that is no longer supported in a single step.  as far as we could tell it's something that's very infrequent, and not worth surfacing in the ui for everyone.

Comment 5

[Gerald Squelart (he/him) (not at Mozilla since 2022-09-15)]

Fair enough. Thank you for considering it.

Comment 6

[Gerald Squelart (he/him) (not at Mozilla since 2022-09-15)]

Maybe related (if not, I/you can open a separate bug) :

On a bug for which I was already needinfo'd, I ticked both 'Clear the needinfo request for <me>' and 'Need more information from
<me>'; the result was that the needinfo was completely removed, instead of becoming 'me->me'.
I expected 'me->me' because I assumed the operations would happen from top to bottom, i.e.: first 'clear' (remove 'them->me') before 'need more info' (add 'me->me').

Even if that particular scenario is not supported (as per comment 4), I think the way the UI is designed gives the impression (hope?) that it is. So either the UI could be shuffled to better indicate the order of operations, or redesigned in such a way to make it either possible or impossible to do certain thing -- Says the non-UI guy... Good luck! :-)

Comment 7

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

FWIW, I consider this bug worse than bug 1239838.  It also can't be worked around by disabling the experimental UI, since it seems to be present in both old and new UI now.

I've taken to asking on IRC for somebody else to please needinfo <user> in bug <N> because I don't want to cancel the needinfo to me.