[phobos] Upping the number of bugzilla votes from 10 to 100

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Wednesday, December 08, 2010 16:16:20 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 12/8/10 3:25 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > On Wednesday, December 08, 2010 15:03:43 Brad Roberts wrote:
> >> On Wed, 8 Dec 2010, Brad Roberts wrote:
> >>> I don't think we have concensus (or even a majority) that suggests
> >>> moving forward.  I think it does do harm.  I think it suggests that we
> >>> pay attention to votes, when reality suggests more strongly that we
> >>> don't.
> >>> 
> >>> Fix the behavior first, imho.
> >> 
> >> Summary so far:
> >> 
> >> yes
> >> 
> >>   Andrei Alexandrescu
> >> 
> >> alternate suggestion
> >> 
> >>   David Simcha
> >> 
> >> no
> >> 
> >>   Brad Roberts
> >>   Jesse Phillips
> >>   Steve Schveighoffer
> >>   Don Clugston
> > 
> > I definitely like the idea of increasing the number of votes and making
> > it possible to apply multiple votes to a bug. I definitely have more
> > than 10 bugs that I'd like to vote on. But I do agree that there's
> > little evidence that highly voted bugs get fixed. I don't think that
> > I've ever had a bug that I've voted on fixed. And if the votes don't
> > actually mean anything, then I'm not sure that there's much point in
> > using them.
> > 
> > So, I like the idea of increasing the vote count, but if it doesn't
> > affect what gets fixed, then perhaps it would be better to just get rid
> > of the voting entirely. Based on votes, I would have expected stuff like
> > the fact that Object isn't const-correct to have been fixed ages ago.
> > But there are a number of bugs which have been around for quite a while
> > which have a number of votes on them and yet never get fiixed.
> 
> The idea is to indeed have votes affect what is being worked on;
> otherwise I wouldn't bother you all. My problem is that I now must pawn
> votes from some bug to another. But the larger issue is that with few
> votes per user and many opened bugs we have essentially a bimodal
> distribution, whereas with more votes per user we have a longer,
> smoother tail, which is more informative.
> 
> I don't really understand the stiff opposition to this. This is not the
> time and the place to criticize the past and present of our process, but
> instead to take steps to improve it. Part of improving the process, now
> that fixing bugs is a major focus, is to figure out a good ranking
> function for bugs. And I believe that increasing the number of votes per
> user would contribute to that. Could we please push this through? Let's
> make it happen.

The change is fine with me. I just don't see much point if the votes are paid 
attention to, and the current impression seems to be that the votes aren't paid 
attention to. By the number of votes, it's fairly clear that not all that many 
people vote anyway. Perhaps changing the number of votes (particularly if you 
can then vote multiple times on bugs that matter more to you) will have a 
positive effect. But regardless, there does need to be at least some focus on 
bugs with a high vote count, or there's no point to having the votes.

I don't really see the change as hurting anything. I just think that if it's 
made that it needs to be followed up on by having the highly voted bugs actually 
given some kind of priority in terms of when they're fixed.

- Jonathan M Davis