Closed Bug 69754 Opened 24 years ago Closed 5 years ago

[Voting] Ability to vote without having to go to a separate voting page

Categories

(Bugzilla :: Extensions, enhancement, P4)

Product:
Bugzilla
Component:
Extensions
Type:
enhancement

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: matt, Unassigned)

References

Details

When I click on "vote for this bug", I get a page where I have to search
for the text field with "0", replace it with "1", scroll down to the
bottom of the page and hit the submit button.  If we're going to only
allow one vote per person per bug, why not make this link add a vote
for the bug without all this manual intervention?
*** Bug 69755 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Bug 31295 is already fixed, btw...


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 31295 ***
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 24 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
V.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
I'm not convinced that this is a duplicate.  (Reopening.)

What matt@nightrealms.com asks for is that when clicking on "Vote for this bug"
in a show_bug.cgi page, he wants his vote tabulated directly.  The fix for bug
31295 makes it easier, but you still have to search for the unchecked check box,
check it, scroll down and hit the submit button.

The only problem with this feature request is that there is a limit on the
amount of votes each user has.  So a direct vote registration can only work if
the maximum number of votes is not yet reached.  But this can be checked, so I
consider this a valid request.
Status: VERIFIED → REOPENED
Resolution: DUPLICATE → ---
I don't like that idea.  We don't do it for any other fields, and if we get rid
of the current checkbox, you wouldn't be able to make multiple changes to a bug
at once.
Target Milestone: --- → Future
-> Bugzilla product
Assignee: tara → myk
Status: REOPENED → NEW
Component: Bugzilla → Creating/Changing Bugs
Product: Webtools → Bugzilla
Version: other → unspecified
This could only be done if the product was limited to one vote per bug, and the
user had not reached their limit for that product. 

I agree - WONTFIX.

Gerv
I disagree with WONTFIXing this bug:

1. I know of no "other fields" whose different behavior would confuse users,
unless this enhancement is about taking you to the "show votes" page and then
making you submit that page but without allowing you to edit the one vote you
are adding to the bug you are voting on, which I don't think it is;

2. you can't make multiple changes to a bug while voting under the current
system either (although you can change your votes for multiple bugs, perhaps
this is what you meant?);

3. the limited circumstances under which this enhancement would apply do not
mean it is not a legitimate enhancement in those situations where it does 
apply.

Voting for a bug in a product that only allowed one vote per bug would certainly
be easier if Bugzilla did it immediately upon clicking "vote for this bug".  I
imagine that in this circumstance Bugzilla would return a message telling you it
had added your vote, a link to the "show votes" page, and the bug report for
which you had just voted.

We could take this even farther and say that the form for adding multiple votes
to a bug (in products that allow this) should be part of the "show bug" page
along with a "show votes" link for when you really want to see all your votes
and edit them collectively.  As it is now, it just doesn't make a lot of sense
to see and have the opportunity to edit your votes for multiple bugs when what
you said you wanted to do is "vote for this bug".

I wouldn't say this is very high priority though.  Targeting to the Future
"milestone" is appropriate.

To me, this is one of the most annoying features when trying to take part in the
Mozilla apps feedback loop. This should be changed. For me, there are many times
when the only thing I want to do is vote for a bug as I have no conversation to
add, and can not change the status.
Question: How much bandwidth is used shuttling around those votes pages? When
voting for a bug, a user is mostly interested in only the bug for a vote is
using, the other several kilobytes of bandwidth end up "on the floor" as waste.
(I also wonder if it causes unnecessary DB load by running a query after an
update to retrieve all the bug-vote information for display.)
QA Contact: mattyt-bugzilla → default-qa
I have a different idea.  Mainly, I support this enhancement.  Yes, if a bug allows only one vote, then click "Vote for this bug" should just do it.  However, if more than one vote is allowed, then I think a pop-up should come out/a menu should slide out asking how many votes you want to use.
Assignee: myk → pdemarco
Also, the current behavior makes it easy to accidentally not vote for a bug you intended to.  It's not immediately obvious (despite the label "enter new vote here") that further action is needed to vote for the bug as it already appears in the list.  I would guess many votes have been lost by people who didn't realize they needed to check an extra box and press another button.
Target Milestone: Future → ---
Blocks: voteoverhaul
It would be best if it was a "bug bar" so that you could vote 0-N

B = graphic of a bug
X = don't vote graphic

5 votes per bug a bar would show up like this:
XBBBBB

1 vote per bug a bar would show up like this:
XB

etc.

This would be a very nice voting feature.
Priority: -- → P4
Summary: Clicking on "vote for this bug" should Just Do It → [Voting] Ability to vote without having to go to a separate voting page
Currently, clicking "(vote)" above a bug's CC list brings up the current user's
list of votes, with the current bug highlighted (usually near the top of the
screen) and, somewhere lower, "nn votes out of mmmm allowed" for this product.

This way of doing it has the following advantage: for products where the
"maximum allowed" number of votes is very small (e.g. 10 for Toolkit or Tech
Evangelism, 50 for mozilla.org, even just 5 for NSPR, rather than the more
usual 1000 or 10000 typical of more "common" Products), the user can see how
close he is to that maximum, and possibly remove votes for bugs which are
RESOLVED and will probably remain so, at the same time as he adds a vote for
the new bug.

I believe that this advantage is important enough to balance the trouble of
having to click once on "(vote)", a second time to check the box next to the
bug's line in the list of votes, a third time on "Change My Votes", and
possibly a fourth time in the "back" drop-down to get back to the bug itself.
I'd prefer to have this bug WONTFIXed than to have it FIXED, if "fixing" it
means losing the "nn of mmmm" warning and the possibility to remove a few
no-more-needed votes if we're close to the (sometimes very small) maximum.
Follow-up to comment #14

Note also that in some Bugzilla implementations other than the one at Mozilla, it may sometimes be possible to vote more than once for a single bug, and then the possibility to "move votes around" becomes even more important.
Tony: in the vast majority of cases, users are voting on products for which they have a large number of votes (and are unlikely to use all of them).  Furthermore, these cases are the ones which are more likely to be encountered by people new to Bugzilla (e.g. most Firefox users).  It's important to provide a good experience to these users, or you risk losing the opinions (in the form of votes) of a large number of people.  Every step in a process is another opportunity for a user to abandon it (or decide that it's too cumbersome to do again).

I think that in the case of products with a small number of allowed votes, the solution is simple: provide an intelligent fall-back behavior when a user attempts to vote for a product for which they have no remaining votes.  In this case, something similar to the current page would be quite useful - users who have run out of votes would, as you suggest, be interested in rearranging their existing ones.  Until somehow has run out of votes (and keeping in mind that most people never will), it seems unnecessarily complicated to add an extra step to the process.
(In reply to comment #16)
[...]
> I think that in the case of products with a small number of allowed votes, the
> solution is simple: provide an intelligent fall-back behavior when a user
> attempts to vote for a product for which they have no remaining votes.  In this
> case, something similar to the current page would be quite useful - users who
> have run out of votes would, as you suggest, be interested in rearranging their
> existing ones.  Until somehow has run out of votes (and keeping in mind that
> most people never will), it seems unnecessarily complicated to add an extra
> step to the process.
> 

Well, Ok; but remember: I may run out of votes while not even present. Let's try to find some not-too-unrealistic example: let's say that in my absence some triager moved several bugs of mine away from Mozilla_Suite/Preferences (where the max votes is 10000, i.e., practically unlimited) and into Toolkit/Preferences (where IIUC most of the labour with Sm-trunk prefwindows is currently taking place), which only allows 10 votes max for the whole Product. I suppose that triager won't get the opportunity of moving _my_ votes about? ;-) So how will the situation get "corrected"?
While comment 14 hits on a good note, nobody has hit on what is the best implementation for this, which is:

You know how at the bottom of Additional Comments is "Add (me) to CC list" and it's a checkbox?  Why not also a "Vote for this bug" checkbox, that once checked stays checked whenever you look at that bug, but you can also remove vote in this manner.  Of course, the old style 'vote manager' would be nice for removing votes for products that are resolved (I personally believe that once a vote is verified fixed, that all votes on it should be cleared and only a record of how many votes it had at the time of resolution would be necessary, if at all).

This works on multiple levels, a user could be encouraged perhaps by default text in the comment box (cleared upon clicking in the box) that if they only want to voice support for the bug, that they can do so by ONLY checking the vote for this bug box and not filling in a comment.

This, I believe, is the best way to solve the issue.  As well, it also solves useless "I REALLY WANT YOU TO FIX THIS BUG PLZ" comments.
(In reply to comment #18)
[...]
> This, I believe, is the best way to solve the issue.  As well, it also solves
> useless "I REALLY WANT YOU TO FIX THIS BUG PLZ" comments.
> 

:-D :-D :-D

Maybe add next to that checkbox a warning "n votes left for product Soandso", where n is a signed integer, the difference between the max votes for that product and the votes you hold (I assume it can be negative if some triager recently moved some bug(s) of yours to some low-minimum product where you are near the maximum, see comment #17), and you couldn't add a new vote for this bug (the checkbox, if unchecked, would be greyed-out) if your number of "available" votes for its Product were less than or equal to zero.

The warning would only be shown for "sufficiently small" values of n, let's say for example n <= 10 (including all negative values). This way, "most people" wouldn't see it, but I would see it for Toolkit bugs (where, at the moment, I have "6 votes used out of 10 allowed"; and, FWIW, most of these bugs started out in Firefox, which has a maximum of 1000, or SeaMonkey, er, sorry, I mean "Mozilla Application Suite", where it is 10000).
Assignee: pdemarco → create-and-change
Voting has since been made an extension. Adjusting the component accordingly.
Assignee: create-and-change → extensions
Component: Creating/Changing Bugs → Extensions
Blocks: 94505
Comment 0 and comment 4 describe how cumbersome it currently is to vote for a bug.

1. Click the 'Vote' button
2. Wait until the votes page loaded
3. Check the checkbox next to the bug (or enter the number of votes, I guess)
4. Scroll down the page
5. Click the 'Change My Votes' button

If you want to get back to the bug:
6. Go back twice in the page history or find the bug again within the list and click its number

I believe comment 11 provides a nice solution to break these six steps down to one or two.

- If only one vote is allowed per bug, clicking the 'Vote' button immediately (i.e. via AJAX request) adds the vote (or remove it again).[1]
- If several votes are allowed per bug, clicking the 'Vote' button shows a UI allowing to select how many votes to give it. Choosing the number of votes will immediately (i.e. via AJAX request) add the votes.[1]
- Tell the user how many votes remain for the product (and update that number immediately after changing the votes).
- Indicate that the user can't vote for a bug (because he has no votes left) by disabling the 'Vote' button, or in case of the number of votes left exceeding the max. number of votes allowed per bug by disallowing to choose a higher number of votes in the UI opening when the 'Vote' button is clicked.

This is basically how uservoice does it. See https://ffdevtools.uservoice.com/forums/246087-firefox-developer-tools-ideas for example.

Sebastian
Depends on: 577849
I think we should follow what I did in bug 48570, i.e. a user can only vote for or against a bug, but totally drop the ability to have several votes per bug. People tend to abuse this feature to give credit to their bugs. This makes the UI and UX even simpler.

I don't see why this bug depends on bug 577849. They are orthogonal, IMO.
(In reply to Frédéric Buclin from comment #22)
> I think we should follow what I did in bug 48570, i.e. a user can only vote
> for or against a bug, but totally drop the ability to have several votes per
> bug. People tend to abuse this feature to give credit to their bugs. This
> makes the UI and UX even simpler.

Fine for me. Reduced complexity.

> I don't see why this bug depends on bug 577849. They are orthogonal, IMO.

The idea behind making 577849 a blocker is that when the new voting UI is implemented, there's no link anymore to the votes page. So the link should be first added to the menu. Otherwise they are not related.

Sebastian
(In reply to Sebastian Zartner [:sebo] from comment #21)
> This is basically how uservoice does it.

Uservoice came to my mind as well.

> - Indicate that the user can't vote for a bug (because he has no votes left) by disabling the 'Vote' button

Though, I would in this case add a link to the current votes list next to the button for the user to remove old votes.

The voting functionality will be replaced with emoji comment reactions in the near future.

Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 24 years ago → 5 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
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