Closed Bug 222099 Opened 21 years ago Closed 21 years ago

Voting system is useless and redundant.

Categories

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

Product:
bugzilla.mozilla.org
Component:
General
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED INVALID

People

(Reporter: squirrelmaster, Assigned: endico)

References

(
URL
)

Details

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 The voting system is pointless and should be removed. It has the same level of functionality as the buttons on streetposts one finds at street crossings. Please remove this useless bloat from the mozilla product. See #18574 for the definitive example of the voting system's uselessness. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Vote Actual Results: A whole lot of nothing. Expected Results: Something.
Summary: Voting system is useless and redundant. → Voting system is useless and redundant.
I don't know about others, but *I* use the voting functionality of bugzilla to keep track of "important" bugs. I can set my email prefs differently than the cc prefs, so I get more email about the bugs I _really_ care about. (I realize that I could just use a different account also...but I'm lazy) I can't really speak as to how votes affect product development. David
Votes have dramatically reduced the number of pointless "me too" comments in bugs, and as such have worked exactly as intended.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 21 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
agree. v
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
> Votes have dramatically reduced the number of pointless "me too" comments in > bugs Upon what data is this statement based?
anecdotal evidence and personal experience, mainly. i used to get more "me too" comments in bugs before votes were added (relative to the total bugzilla traffic, anyway)
Cool. That's something we can test empirically. Let's take a random sample of bugs before the voting system was put in place, and then a random sample of bugs after same, and compare the average number of "me too" comments. I assume, that since your criteria for marking this bug as invalid was that voting reduced "me too" comments, that if empirical testing reveals otherwise no one will get involved in YABEB (Yet Another Bug Ego Battle) and change the criteria required to keep this bug open?
Hmmm. There is no closed bug against Bugzilla concerning the implementation of the voting feature. When did this take place?
It was checked in at 10/07/1999 16:54 by terry%mozilla.org That was back in the early days when a lot of Bugzilla development just happened and didn't necessarily have bugs to go with it. (Terry was the only one with checkin privs at the time, so if it broke, he knew he was the one that broke it)
If you can prove that votes did not reduce the number of people writing "me too" comments (relative to the number of active bugzilla participants), I would certainly see validity in reopening this bug.
You can't prove a negative, and you know that (or should).
In summary: REPORTER: The voting system serves no purpose. Let's remove it. IAN: Unsubstantiated claim. JERRY: Can you substantiate that? IAN: Prove me wrong.
Sorry, let me rephrase that into a positive test: If you can prove that votes the number of people writing "me too" comments (relative to the number of active bugzilla participants) has either remained the same or increased since the introduction of the voting system, I would certainly see validity in reopening this bug. I have, through extensive personal experience (I have been known to receive over 1000 bug mails per day), the very firm impression that since the introduction of the voting system, the number of people writing pointless advocacy comments has decreased. For example, without votes, I would imagine bug 18574 would have maybe least twice as many comments (at one point last week there were about twice as many votes on that bug as there were comments). At the moment, again in my experience, most advocacy comments are written by a vocal minority, while the rest of the non-contributing community is content with showing their interest in a bug via the voting system. When we had no voting system, it seemed to me that the non-contributing community was much more ready to add comments (as they had no other way of indicating their support).
Er, that should be: If you can prove that the number of people writing "me too" comments (relative to the number of active bugzilla participants) has either remained the same or increased since the introduction of the voting system, I would certainly see validity in reopening this bug.
I'd like to add that I'm one of the many people voting for bug 18574 as well as many other bugs I think is "extra important". Since I'm not a coder and thus can't really make a difference by submitting actual code, I sure appreciate that there exsists a way that allows me to "make my voice heard" that doesn't hinder the actuall progress of the bug by spamming it full with useless "me too" comments. Any suggestion of removing the vote function should include a viable replacement to fill the "me too" function. Since this bug does not contain such a replacment feature, neither in theory nor actual code, I fully agree with marking it invalid.
So, in other words, with the voting system already in place you are still making a "me too" post to a bug.
no. because its impossible to vote against a bug.
So what you are implying, then, is that voting doesn't help with "me too" posts *against* a bug, but only "me too" posts *for* a bug. Hmmm. The problem with voting is that the word "vote" has certain implications. It implies meaning by its historical usage. When people vote on something, they expect that their vote means something ... that if something is open to vote upon, then there will be a result of that vote. I don't think people expect the word vote to represent a meaningless alternative to "me too" posts. In the case of Mozilla that implication is that bugs with the highest numbers of votes will be fixed first. It has been stated many times in a few places that this is not the intent of the voting system on Mozilla at all. I know this, and you know this, but people who only see that they can vote for a bug probably only have the implication that the word "vote" carries with it. They probably only learn the truth by cynically noting that what gets fixed has nothing to do with what the people who use the software prefer. Perhaps if another, more fitting, word were substituted for vote it would be a little more clear at first glance.
Yeah, I wouldn't mind a new name, but the problem is, what name? (And yeah, being able to vote "no" on a bug would also be useful.)
It doesn't have to be one word. It could read something like "Record my preference for having this bug fixed/not fixed." I think it would be pretty cool to do it that way for awhile and do some regression and/or chi square stuff to see how the direction of drivers@mozilla.org correlates to the direction that the users prefer. With being able to vote not to fix a bug we could probably get pretty accurate results. However, with the ability to record a preference for any bug, the limit should be removed and just be allowed to say "Yes - fix it" or "No - don't" on each and every bug if you wanted.
Hixie asks: Yeah, I wouldn't mind a new name, but the problem is, what name? poll.
Poll might work. Someone should file a bug on the Bugzilla team about renaming "votes" to "polls". Negative votes are covered by bug 48570.
Component: Bugzilla: Other b.m.o Issues → General
Product: mozilla.org → bugzilla.mozilla.org

I just voted for this bug for the pure irony factor, plus he's right.

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