194922 - Flag to Request an Answer (limit comment mail notification to a user)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(bugzilla.mozilla.org :: General, enhancement)

Description

[David Bradley]

We should have the ability to request an answer from a user. My current problem,
is that I know there was a bug that someone asked me a question, but I don't
know the bug #. I'm cc'd on too may bugs to try and go wading through them. If
we had something in place, similar to the review request, we could "request"
information from a user. And then users could do a query to see what open
request/questions there are and deal with them.

Comment 1

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Well, the way the flags work, Bugzilla could easily handle this already using
that same system.  So I'm assuming you want it set up that way on b.m.o?

Comment 2

[David Bradley]

I wasn't sure if this was a coding issue, or as you suggested, the existing
request system could be used. If it can, that would be great. Just to be clear
the "question" feature, that I'm thinking of, isn't tagged to a specific patch.
I guess it could be useful there as well.

In talking with others, most people are using their bugmail, marking the message
unread. It's an ok alternative, but would be nice to be able to ping people and
keep the bug on their radar list.

Comment 3

[Bradley Baetz (:bbaetz)]

other systems have RESOLVED/NEEDINFO, which is prbably better for this. I'm
pretty sure that a bug exists on that already.

Comment 4

[David Bradley]

The problem is that marking something NEEDINFO, is that it doesn't say who the
information is requested from, the reporter, someone on the cc list, or some one
else. I might have several questions to ask of several people. Maybe this
doesn't happen enough to warrant such a feature add. The idea just came out my
frustration with question that was asked of me in a bug and now I can't find it
without wading through a large bug list.

Comment 5

[Daniel Wang]

can't you just write a private e-mail message to the user? I think
that's how most QAs do it.

Comment 6

[timeless]

private emails are problematic since you could end up with 5 qa people sending
emails.

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

So the request here is for a "question" flag to be added to b.m.o., for all bugs?

This could then by set by the questioner, giving the name of the questionee. The
questionee could clear it.

However, is it really true that people are having so much trouble communicating
that they need another mechanism than the comment? If you can't read all your
bugmail, reduce your bugmail volume :-)

Gerv

Comment 8

[David Bradley]

What I was looking for was to flag a bug for follow up. Ideally I had wanted
something tied to a user. Reading through a list of bugs, I might get several
questions, and some of the bugs I might not own.

An alternative way would be to do something like put my initials in the "Status
Whiteboard". It's not as formal, but I think it might work the same if it's ok
to do that.

Comment 9

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

We seem to have got by without this for the past two years... is it still a burning issue, or can we close the bug?

Gerv

Comment 10

[David Bradley]

I still think it would be a nice feature. But since there's been little interest from others lets close it and reduce the noise. Flagging or filing bug-mail is at least a partial solution for me on the receiving side.