23531 - New resolution wanted : "Dissappeared" (or "Mystery Fix")

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

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

Description

[Joseph Elwell]

This is in reference to bug 23378 and other bugs that I personally have marked
as WORKSFORME.

In bug 23378 WORKSFORME isn't exactly the right resolution. I think bugzilla
needs a new resolution something that says "Not happening anymore" or
"dissappeared" That would keep people on top of bugs that don't actually get
fixed or addressed specifically however the bug itself dissappears.

Often bugs get marked as WORKSFORME because Bugzilla defines the "FIXED"
resolution as: 'A fix for this bug is checked into the tree and tested.'

WORKSFORME is: 'All attempts at reproducing this bug were futile, reading the
code produces no clues as to why this behavior would occur. If more information
appears later, please re-assign the bug, for now, file it.'

bug 23378 is neither (unless someone speaks up and says they actually checked in
a fix and tested it) Instead many bugs get fixed, i would guess, seemingly by
accident - but more likely by the natural progression of programming and testing.

In the spirit of these types of bugs, I think Bugzilla needs to have a better
classification. Something like, "Dissappeared", or "No longer existent".
Something to convey that YES this bug is valid, but it doesn't show up in more
recent builds AND no one checked in a fix specific to this bug.

This way bugs don't get overlooked just because they don't show up anymore yet
bugzilla would mark these bugs less importance to their assignee's than trivial
but possibly more important than enhancement.

Comment 1

[Eli Goldberg]

...Claris/Filemaker uses a "Mystery Fix" resolution for such bugs.

Comment 2

[Terry Weissman]

I really hate adding new states and resolutions.  Keeping these things *small*
is vital to making Bugzilla easy-to-use.

Me, I'm perfectly happy calling something WORKSFORME if it starts doing so.

Comment 3

[Eli Goldberg]

Terry, I think if you chat with the folks who use Bugzilla in more detail for bug
reporting, you'll find that the cumulative demand for such an option may actually
exceed your dislike of it.

"WORKSFORME" may work for you, but testers tend to get extremely annoyed when
they work hard to write perfectly valid bug reports which get magically fixed by
fluke, and receive resolutions of "WORKSFORME".

Moreso, some Netscape-employed mozilla contributors are reviewed in part based on
their bug metrics; it simply makes them look bad if they happen to be writing
bugs in a component whose engineer is swamped, gets to their bugs months later,
and they all get resolved as WORKSFORME.

This has resulted in several altercations by e-mail among developers who
subsequently get annoyed when QA engineers correspondingly re-open the bug and
re-resolve it as "FIXED".

I'm leaving this as RESOLVED for a few days in case anyone would like to re-open
it. Otherwise, I'll rubber-stamp it as verified/wontfix.

Comment 4

[Eli Goldberg]

Rubber-stamping as Verified/WONTFIX.

Comment 5

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

moving to Bugzilla product
reassign to default owner/qa for INVALID/WONTFIX/WORKSFORME/DUPLICATE