Closed Bug 16153 Opened 26 years ago Closed 26 years ago

Votes should be distributed to depended bugs.

Categories

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

Product:
Bugzilla
Component:
Bugzilla-General
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: CodeMachine, Assigned: justdave)

References

Details

I suggest that any votes for a bug x that depends on bug y should get added to bug y. This is because without doing this, votes could give an uneven picture of how important something is to get fixed. Of course this means that one vote could result in many votes being added to. I suggest some way of preventing voting on tracking bugs. This compound figure is what should appear on queries, and on the bug report itself, you should see: Votes 15 (10 from Bug #1, 2 from Bug #2, 3 from this bug)
Summary: Interaction between dependencies and voting. → Votes should be distributed to depended bugs.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 26 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Down this path leads nightmares. People can track dependencies and decide for themselves where their votes go. There's no way the machine is going to get it right, especially given all the weird ways people are using the dependencies feature.
I don't necessarily agree. Machine computation is the main issue as I see it. What this essentially means is that you might need to update lots of bugs when you change a vote, since computation at the time is probably too expensive. I don't see how it can fail to get it right. I'm not sure what "strange" ways of using dependencies means. If tracking bugs, that's certainly an issue, and I'm sure sure how to prevent votes on general bugs. Perhaps votes should be split up down paths of multiple dependencies, and you not be permitted to vote if there are too many. If you are referring to people stuffing up dependencies, I think these should be fixed on their own. Your issues are certainly valid though, and they will need a resolution for this to be implemented.
Why has this bug been closed after so little discussion? I think this would be an excellent feature and have therefore added my vote to it even though it has been "resolved". Terry Weissman's comment that people should do this manually doesn't strike me as very well founded. Isn't the point of Bugzilla to make it easier for people to handle bug reports? And the point of the votes to make it easier for developers to see where people are having problems? If I vote for a bug that needs for some other bug to get fixed, of course I want to see all the dependencies fixed. Terry, I'd appreciate very much if you could elaborate on the nightmares, what you think would prevent the machine from getting it right, and the weird ways people are using the dependencies feature. Thanks!
See, for example, bug 70090. Better yet, see the dependency tree, at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=70090. You can hand-wave around "some way of preventing voting on tracking bugs", but it's going to be hard. Here's an obvious abuse: someone who wants to vote on 17 different bugs can create a new bug which depends on those 17, and then vote on it. Yes, you could invent mechanisms to prevent and worry about all of these. But it's going to be complicated and hard-to-understand, and one of the (ever-eroding) principles of Bugzilla is to try and keep things simple. I continue to believe that the complexity isn't worth it.
I have to agree with Terry now on the proposal as it is outlined. That's not to say we can't do anything about it, however. For example we might just say on the bug report that one or more bugs blocked by this one has a vote. Or maybe it would be OK to show the number of votes on these. But I think it's wrong to add them onto this bug as the total would appear to a query. However if you have any other proposals, please open a new bug report. V.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
moving to Bugzilla product reassign to default owner/qa for INVALID/WONTFIX/WORKSFORME/DUPLICATE
Assignee: terry → justdave
Component: Bugzilla → Bugzilla-General
Product: Webtools → Bugzilla
QA Contact: matty
Version: other → unspecified
*** Bug 92440 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Bug 92440 is the new report mentioned in comment 5. It suggests a new field in the database. That way, everybody wins.
(In reply to comment #4) Users now have 1000 votes, so i think the vote abuse point is moot. As for that dependency tree, it's only 4 levels deep. Have so many new users joined that modern day servers can't deal with updating a few extra fields?
QA Contact: matty_is_a_geek → default-qa
You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.