Poisonous depersonalisation and `request a fix in ...'

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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On 20 Jan, 2006, at 1:11 AM, Ian Jackson wrote:
> ...
> It's true that I don't necessarily know who will end up reading my bug
> report.  However:
>
> Firstly, often I _will_ know because I have filed similar bugs before
> and established a relationship with the maintainer(s).
>
> Secondly, projects have an organisational culture so that even if I
> don't know exactly which individual will end up dealing with my
> message, I _can_ often have an understanding of how they will probably
> react to particular things and what would or would not be a good way
> to approach them.
>
> Thirdly, if I don't know much about the organisational culture into
> which I'm sending my report, I will be more thorough and cautious, so
> as to try to make a good first impression.  I'll treat the interaction
> more as one with a stranger, where I'll apply wider norms of
> communication and err on the side of caution so as not to get caught
> out by cultural differences.
>
> Surely you see that all of these situations involve me knowing roughly
> how, where, and who by (maybe not always which specific individual,
> but by what kind of culture and in what kind of context) my message is
> going to be received ?
> ...

Indeed I can, but I don't know that that translates into any changes to 
Malone's interface in general, or to the "Request fix" interface in 
particular. (Though of course vast changes are needed for other 
reasons, like efficiency and readability.) Do you have any specific 
suggestions?

Perhaps the pages for reporting a bug, and for requesting a fix 
elsewhere, should include the names of the people who will be e-mailed 
as a result? (That would be tricky because we'd need to use XmlHttp to 
get the list of bug contacts for the distro, product, or package name 
you'd entered in the form, before you submitted the form.)

Perhaps Malone should also calculate the distribution of response times 
for bugs in that distro/product/package, so it can print something like 
"Bugs in Ubuntu foobar are usually acknowledged within 4 days"? (That 
would be even more difficult.)

- -- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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