Confusing error page when trying to view a private bug

[Jeff Lane ]

I noticed this the other day when following up on some bugs that were marked as duplicates of another. The original bug that the others were being marked duplicate of was listed as Private. So for each bug that was marked a duplicate, I would receive a message like so:

*** This bug is a duplicate of bug 729431 ***
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/729431

Thank you for taking the time to report this crash and helping to make
Ubuntu better. This particular crash has already been reported and is a
duplicate of bug #729431, so is being marked as such. Please look at
the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you
can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug.
Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in
the other report. Please continue to report any other bugs you may
find.

*** Please note that the bug number listed is NOT the one I first noticed this with, that bug has been marked public by pitti.

THe issue is this though... given that message, when I click on it to view the bug marked as the master bug, I get a generic error page that says it does not exist.

I thought that there was something wrong with the Apport Retracing Bot and thus I notified pitti. Turns out that the Master bug was actually just private.

So consider this a request for enhancement...

if a bug is marked as a duplicate of a private bug, instead of returning a weird, unhelpful error page when trying to view that bug, how about returning a page that says something like "Sorry, the bug you're trying to view has been marked private"

or something like that.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.