boost upstream attention to LP bug activity by making RSS access easier

[Martin Olsson]

After triaging a ton of xorg bugs I noticed that a pretty significant problem is that bugs gets stuck in LP and they never make it upstream. This include high quality bugs with full logs and sometimes even repro steps. To help fix this it would be nice if some upstream people monitored their packages bugmail in LP. Even if they just looked at 1/10th of the bugmail their comments could quickly help other ubuntu triagers learn how upstream thinks and what questions needs to be asked etc. So how can be increase upstream partitipation in LP? Make it easier and more convenient for them to do so.

One great way for upstream to follow along LP bug activity is RSS feeds. However, today the RSS feeds offered "per source package" are sort of broken because they don't include any actual information (if a new comment is added the comment itself itself out of the entry that goes out over RSS and there is also no link to the LP bug in the RSS entry). Compared to normal LP bugmail, RSS offers a poor experience.

Personally, I resisted subscribing directly to all bugmail because A) I didn't know it was possible, and B) I didn't want my normal bugmail to get burried in tons of generic bugmail, for bugs I've reported myself I take great care to stay responsive while I don't treat the general bugmail with the same diligence. For this reason, it suits me great to have an RSS feed with the general bug activity for a few select packages that I care deeply about and then I want to get my normal bug mail through e-mail like I always do.

My suggestion is therefore that you spend a few days fixing the bad RSS experience and getting it up to the same standard as the normal bug e-mails.

I've included two screenshots of what the RSS experience looks today. What I would like to add is basically A) all the text that it added to the LP bug should also go into the RSS entry like comments and changes package assignment, title changes and whatnot. And please also include a HTTP link to the real LP bug in case I want to actually triage this RSS entry, sorting it into the right package or adding a comment etc. I also would like to to be obvious from the RSS entry who actually made the change/comment because usually I care a lot more if an upstream dev comments on a bug or if some random guy posts a "me too" comment (therefore this info should in the RSS so I can choose whether to open that bug in Firefox or not based on that info).