215151 - Disallow voting for your own bugs

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Bugzilla :: Bugzilla-General, enhancement)

Description

[Johan Walles]

It is currently possible to vote for bugs you have filed yourself.  In bugzillas
with few vote(r)s, when people do this it messes up the stats.

I want Bugzilla to prevent people from voting for their own bugs.

Comment 1

[Johan Walles]

Added my vote to this bug.  For demonstration purposes only.  Honest ;-).

Comment 2

[timeless]

Calendar  	Mozilla Calendar  	open  	3  	1  	3  	Delete

How badly does it mess up your stats? Some people use votes to track their
buglists (and given how useless 'my bugs' is to a user w/o canconfirm i don't
blame them). As long as a user can't vote for a bug enough times to confirm
(seen above w/ calendar where a user has 3 votes, can only use one vote per bug
and a bug needs 3 votes to be confirmed).

Comment 3

[Johan Walles]

Hard to say, since I'd have to separate self-voters from real voters, but I've
added an example URL into the Eclipse Bugzilla.  It has twenty bugs with one
vote each, two with two votes, one with four and one with five.  I know for sure
some of these votes are bogus.  IMO, having one vote should be a big difference
from having zero votes in this list, but since people are voting for their own
bugs anything below 4-5 gets lost in the clutter.

If "My Bugs" is broken it should be fixed.

About confirming bugs, what you are saying is that if I file a bug and have
votes left, my bugs need only two votes to be confirmed.  Other people who use
the voting feature for voting for bugs they agree with, their bugs need three
votes to be confirmed.  I fail to see the logic in this.

Comment 4

[Jason Bassford]

I see nothing wrong in being able to vote for your own bug.  Just because you
file a bug doesn't meant that it's important enough to you that it be fixed. 
You can file 100 bugs and still only *really* think that 5 are important - so
you vote for those 5 to express your opinion that they are important.  Since
voting is the only real way of expressing this sort of thing, it would be a kind
of censorship to NOT allow somebody to vote for their own bug.  (You shouldn't
be discriminated against just because you filed it.)

If a self-vote is throwing off certain other functions that it's those other
functions which should be re-evaluated, not the the self-voting itself...

Comment 5

[Johan Walles]

Jason, what you describe is the "Severity" field.  If what you are reporting is
a minor problem, the "Severity" can be set to "Minor".

Also, I don't understand what you mean with "self-vote is throwing off certain
other functions"?  It throws off vote counting, which IMO should be a far more
important aspect of the voting feature than duplicating the Severity field.

Comment 6

[Jason Bassford]

> Jason, what you describe is the "Severity" field.

Not at all.  I can report something as minor or an enhancement and still really
want to see it fixed for personal reasons.  Alternatively, I can report a
critical or blocker bug but NOT vote for it (despite it's obvious importance)
because I know that it will be fixed anyway and there's no reason to indicate to
other my own personal preference that it gets attention. Severity and voting
have nothing to do with one another.

> It throws off vote counting

This makes no sense to me at all.  If I self-vote for a bug then a query on the
number of votes will, legitimately, count my vote among those.  Again, I don't
see why self-votes are skewing any results you're seeing.  They don't "mess up
the stats" - they're part of the stats.  Your claim that self-votes are "bogus"
is just confusing.  As I already mentioned, *filing* a bug is not the same as
implicitly voting for it...

Comment 7

[Johan Walles]

> As I already mentioned, *filing* a bug is not the same as implicitly voting
> for it...

But when I file a bug it is.  I file bugs because I want them fixed, just as I
vote for bugs that I want fixed.  From my perspective, filing a bug and then
voting for it equals giving it "two points".

I understand now that you sometimes file bugs without wanting them fixed.  From
that point of view, voting for your own bugs is of course OK.

I'd say this is a matter of taste, and I don't agree with your point of view,
but I do understand it now (I think :-).

Comment 8

[Jason Bassford]

> I understand now that you sometimes file bugs without wanting them fixed.

Er, no. When I file a bug I always *do* want it fixed (or else I wouldn't file
it).  But wanting it fixed isn't the same as voting for it.  Voting for a bug is
the same as saying that "this bug is particularly important to me."  I may file
hundreds of bugs, some of them of high severity, but only really feel like a
handful are important enough to vote for.  This is particularly true when the
number of votes you have is limited.  If I *do* file 200 bugs, and I only have 5
votes, then the 5 I assign my votes to are those which I care about the most.

Every bug I've filed I've wanted fixed.  I've only actually *voted* for a couple
of those that I've filed.

Comment 9

[Jesse Ruderman]

I don't like the way votes are "this bug is particularly important to me."  I
think votes should mean "I think this bug should be fixed" and there should be a
very high limit to the number of bugs you vote on.

On bugzilla.mozilla.org, I use "votes:2" in many of my searches.  I might switch
to using "votes:1" if reporters couldn't vote, but I'm not sure I would.

Comment 10

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Reassigning bugs that I'm not actively working on to the default component owner
in order to try to make some sanity out of my personal buglist.  This doesn't
mean the bug isn't being dealt with, just that I'm not the one doing it.  If you
are dealing with this bug, please assign it to yourself.

Comment 11

[Paul]

(In reply to comment #7)
> > As I already mentioned, *filing* a bug is not the same as implicitly voting
> > for it...
> But when I file a bug it is.  I file bugs because I want them fixed, just as I
> vote for bugs that I want fixed.  From my perspective, filing a bug and then
> voting for it equals giving it "two points".

Then posting 500 bugs gets 500 "extra" votes...  this is not the intent.  Manage your votes as you see fit.  Including on your own.  They are a *limited* resource, use them wisely.  ;)

Comment 12

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

This isn't invalid, it's just WONTFIX. It's a valid request, we just won't do it. Instead people can limit the number of votes per bug.