264057 - Ability to insert out-of-order comments

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Bugzilla :: Creating/Changing Bugs, enhancement)

Description

[Christopher Hicks]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041002 Firefox/0.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041002 Firefox/0.10

As discussed in bug 225221 out of order comments are part of life for some
bugzilla installations.  Should bugzilla officially say this is OK, or should it
be labeled as heretical nonsense?

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use email or a PDA as a source of bugzilla comments

Actual Results:  
Since comment ID's are generated on the fly, comment numbers change.

Expected Results:  
Comment number stability and out of order comments.

Comment 1

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Store two timestamps, one the timestamp that was submitted with it, one when it
actually hit Bugzilla.  If it was submitted via the webform, both times will be
the same.  Order them by the actual entry timestamp, display the one that was
submitted with it?  (for an accurate picture, I'd say display both if they're
different, but that makes things nasty in the UI).

Of course, you could always have your alternate entry methods include the
timestamp on the first line of the comment it enters...

Comment 2

[Christopher Hicks]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Of course, you could always have your alternate entry methods include the
> timestamp on the first line of the comment it enters...

I don't have any problem with two timestamps except for how to display them in a
decent way.  And I'm not sure most people are going to care about both dates.

Please assign this bug to me.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Store two timestamps, one the timestamp that was submitted with it, one when it
> actually hit Bugzilla.  If it was submitted via the webform, both times will be
> the same.  Order them by the actual entry timestamp, display the one that was
> submitted with it?  (for an accurate picture, I'd say display both if they're
> different, but that makes things nasty in the UI).

The problem with "order them by the actual entry timestamp" is that the comment
numbers will change when and if people submit out of order comments. So
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=264057#c3
will refer to one comment today and another tomorrow. Which is bad.

As I said in bug 225221, from whence this bug came:

"The thing is, having the two orders be not the same isn't good. It would be
really confusing to have:

Additional Comment #1 From Jouni Heikniemi    2003-11-10 07:27 PDT  [reply]
Additional Comment #17 From Gervase Markham   2003-11-11 14:33 PDT  [reply]
Additional Comment #9 From Christopher Hicks  2003-11-12 19:25 PDT  [reply]
Additional Comment #2 From Dave Miller        2003-11-14 09:21 PDT  [reply]

but it would be even more confusing to have:

Additional Comment #1 From Jouni Heikniemi    2003-11-10 07:27 PDT  [reply]
Additional Comment #2 From Dave Miller        2003-11-14 09:21 PDT  [reply]
Additional Comment #3 From Christopher Hicks  2003-11-12 19:25 PDT  [reply]
Additional Comment #4 From Gervase Markham    2003-11-11 14:33 PDT  [reply]"

I'd be interested to hear from chicks as to why submitting Bugzilla comments via
email or PDA incurs delays so long that it's going to confuse discussion to have
comments in arrival order. Even with the web interface today, people often read
a bug mail, go and reply without checking the comments, and so say something
that doesn't take everything into account. And the world keeps turning.

Gerv

Comment 4

[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 5

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

I would think "heretical nonsense." We have midair collision protection to
protect against out-of-order stuff, it works pretty well.

Comment 6

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Chris has a point in bug 225221, comment 18: sometimes comment submission is asynchronous, and comments get received by Bugzilla long after being submitted by the client.  But I think ordering by received date is better than ordering by submitted date for most installations, especially when asynchronous comments are few and far between.

So we should stick with the current behavior, at least by default.  But if we get a patch that lets installations optionally configure Bugzilla to reorder comments by time submitted rather than time received, I'll take it.  chicks clearly has a need for it on his installation.  Ideally, however, I'd like to see a solution that resolves the basic conflict.  I just don't know what that is.