Canned "This bug did not have a package" response wastes time

Bug #555293 reported by Matthew Paul Thomas
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Triaged
Low
Unassigned

Bug Description

When a bug is reported on Ubuntu with no package specified, Ubuntu Bug Squad members copy and paste a canned response into a bug comment.

From <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Responses>: "Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage . I have classified this bug as a bug in PKGNAME.<<BR>>(With many applications, you can report a future bug directly on the appropriate package by opening the application's "Help" menu and choosing "Report a Problem". https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs)"

Or from <http://people.canonical.com/~brian/greasemonkey/bugsquad-replies.xml>: "Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. I have classified this bug as a bug in PKGNAME. When reporting bugs in the future please use apport, either via the appropriate application's "Help -> Report a Problem" menu or using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs."

This has several minor problems:
* It makes the process of refiling take longer than it otherwise would -- and once bug 57414 was fixed, it would take even longer. (Launchpad Greasemonkey Scripts automate this, but that slightly raises the barrier to entry for taking part in the Bug Squad.)
* Most of it is identical information that will always be relevant to the reporter immediately once the bug is reported, but they receive it only once a triager has looked at it.
* The comment is directed only to the reporter, but it clutters the page for everyone who comes across it, and the e-mail notifications for everyone who was subscribed.
* If you're unlucky enough to be searching Launchpad for text that happens to be in the canned response (e.g. the word "classified"), you'll get lots of false positives.

Instead, I suggest that Launchpad have a field for a distribution's bug supervisor to supply advisory text for this situation. The text should be displayed on a bug report, immediately once it is reported, whenever (a) the report is on a distribution that Launchpad knows about the packages for but (b) the report is not currently filed on a package. The text could also be included in the initial e-mail notification sent to the reporter.

This would be one small step towards the years-old idea of "What this bug report needs next".

To avoid duplication, three other things should happen immediately after this bug is fixed:
1. remove the canned response from <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage>
2. remove the canned response from <http://people.canonical.com/~brian/greasemonkey/bugsquad-replies.xml>
3. mail the Bug Squad mailing list to let them know to update their copy of launchpad-gm-scripts.

(See also bug 520405.)

tags: added: degreasing
Revision history for this message
Deryck Hodge (deryck) wrote :

This could be done in conjunction with the work for bug 556499. There is some overlap between the two bugs, though some differences between them as well. And they fix different problems, too.

Changed in malone:
status: New → Triaged
importance: Undecided → Low
Graham Binns (gmb)
tags: added: story-better-bug-notification
Revision history for this message
Robert Collins (lifeless) wrote :

Alternatively, if Ubuntu does not want bugs w/out a package set, we could just stop supporting that.

Colin Watson (cjwatson)
summary: - Canned "This bug did not have a package" reponse wastes time
+ Canned "This bug did not have a package" response wastes time
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