Bugzilla - an experiment in trackability

[Brad Roberts]

On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Sean Kelly wrote:
> Don Clugston wrote:
> > Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> > > The preferred way now to submit bugs is in the bugzilla, right Walter?
> > > (and only in the bugzilla, since it takes care automatically of mirroring
> > > the report on the .bugs NG, right?)
> > > 
> > > How do we deal with spam now? For the bugzilla to work well I presume we
> > > have to enter correct email addresses there, but, coupled with the NG
> > > reporting (which, on top of that, is archived on the Web), we have a big
> > > spam bait here.
> > 
> > Yup, that's a feature of bugzilla which is absolutely dreadful. And there
> > doesn't seem to be any need whatsover for email addresses to appear
> > anywhere. (I submitted a bug report about gcc, and they put my email on the
> > bug report (it appears in XREF section). Three weeks later the spam flood
> > began. Turned me off gcc for life).
> > Create a sacrificial email address for it, I reckon.
> 
> I simply game up on preventing spam a while back--a spam bot found my domain
> and started hitting evveryone on it simultaneously.  However, we've got
> Spamassassin and such installed to filter via procmail and I don't see more
> than one or two spam mails a week in my inbox.  Couple that with the
> Thunderbird filtering and that takes the number down to basically zero.  I'd
> suggest simply using gmail or another service that has capable spam filtering
> and not worry about it.  Though this obviously doesn't hold for work accounts
> (I've never put my work email online and I probably get 10 spam mails a day
> there).

A agree with Sean here.  I've used one and only one email address for a 
little over 10 years now asside from a few spamtrap addresses at various 
points on and off (ie, never ever used, just exist to see what spam gets 
delivered).  The rates are approximately the same.  I long ago decided 
that the only defense is to be defensive.. greylist, spamassassin, etc.  
Train up some good filters and protect yourself.  Relying on lack of 
posting just doesn't work.

There's little point to a bug tracking system where you can't track and 
communicate with the submitters.  Large percentage of bugs need 
interaction.  Bugzilla, like most web based tracking systems, has that as 
an underlying assumption and I don't have the time or will to invest the 
time it'd take to change that assumption.  I'd much rather spend it fixing 
dmd/gdc/etc.

Later,
Brad