Bug discussion is append-only and cannot be gardened

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Once the question(s) and/or suggestion(s) in a bug comment have been answered/decided and incorporated into the bug description, the comment should be marked obsolete so that people coming across the bug for the first time don't have to read all the comments (just as people reading a Wikipedia article, for example, don't have to read the article's entire archive of Talk pages). This should be done by presenting bug comments on the page for editing a bug report, with an "Obsolete" checkbox for each one. Then when displaying the bug report, obsolete comments are collapsed by default (but still visible if expanded).

Further details and implementation notes at <https://launchpad.canonical.com/KeepingBugsConcise>.

[Brad Bollenbach (bradb)]

Is this a feature that is really going to help a Malone user kick ass or does it risk being another nail in the coffin of the new user approaching Malone?

Do we have any evidence so far that Malone users are actively keeping descriptions up-to-date?

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

(1) Yes, because it will make Malone bug reports much faster to read and understand than those in any other bug tracker. (2) No, because the extra control would be tiny in comparison with the unnecessary coffin nails that, in other bug reports, I have asked to be removed from Malone. (3) Currently it is easier to add a comment than to update the description, and updating a bug report makes the original description display confusingly as an expanded comment. Both these things are discouraging people from updating descriptions, but the former will be fixed eventually, and the latter should be fixed as part of this bug (by making the original description collapsed by default).

[Christian Reis (kiko)]

Let's say we agreed to do this. Wouldn't it lead to the comments on a bug seeming truncated, with answers to questions that aren't immediately apparent?

In this bug, for instance, let's say I added the following comment:

"""
Brad, mpt is right about points 2 and 3, which are enough for us to agree to implement this feature. I am also concerned about point 1, but unless you have further input..

Let's start work on this. I suggest we begin by adding a flag to the comments table, and changing the way displayComment() works, filtering out obsolete comments. I'm not sure how to add the control to actually change the comments to be obsolete, though.
"""

The more or less obvious thing to do would be to make the first comments obsolete. However, it would leave my last comment dangling, which would confuse at least some people.

What do you think?

[Brad Bollenbach (bradb)]

I don't see this being an issue, once we allow reply'ing to comments in the web UI, so that one isn't constantly getting contextless comments in bugmail. Like gmail, the quoted text could possibly be collapsed by default.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

This has nothing to with bugmail. It's about saving time for people reading bug reports on the Web.

[Brad Bollenbach (bradb)]

mpt, I think you missed the context to which I was replying (which is no surprise, because comments made in the web are contextless), but I was answering kiko's question when he asked:

Let's say we agreed to do this. Wouldn't it lead to the comments on a bug seeming truncated, with answers to questions that aren't immediately apparent?

The mention of bugmail was incidental; a side benefit of my proposed solution to the question kiko asked above (and a proposal that is intended to help people save time reading comments through the web.)

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Okay. Anyway, Kiko's question is already answered in the spec. ("Sometimes a comment will be mostly, but not entirely, obsolete and will have to be left expanded...")

[Cristóbal M. Palmer (cristobalpalmer)]

Please add this feature. I just stuck my foot in my mouth on another bug and was forced to add a "my bad" second comment. Even better would be the ability to delete/edit your own posts if there are no replies yet.

[Siegfried Gevatter (rainct)]

(Cristobal M. Palmer:) I don't think adding the possibility to edit or delete comments would be good. It could get very confusing to receive a bug comment by email and when you go to reply it you see it isn't there any more or has nothing to do with what you read before (or even worse, you reply by email and answer a comment that doesn't exist).

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

@RainCT: This bug report does not suggest making comments completely removable; it only suggest making them "obsolete". Ideally, this would be done by making comments "collapsible". You would still be able to see "obsolete" comments if needed, but they wouldn't clutter up the given bug report.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Please have a look at my suggestion in bug #117741 (marked as duplicate), where I propose an "advanced" view option which filters/masks unwanted comments. If you don't turn on this option (because you know what you're doing) you see all comments and you are not confused and no feelings are hurt. My bug was more about hiding off-topic comments that otherwise make bug analysis and triaging more difficult, however my bug got eaten by this one so I have to jump in here.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

The description links to a wiki page that is not accessible...

(Maybe we should just grow up and move to a bug system which is open-source and developed openly in a Ubuntu spirit?)

[Siegfried Gevatter (rainct)]

@Chris Wagner: Yes, and I fully agree with this. I was answering to Cristobal M. Palmer's comment.

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

On Fri, 2007-06-08 at 20:46 +0000, Tormod Volden wrote:
> (Maybe we should just grow up and move to a bug system which is open-
> source and developed openly in a Ubuntu spirit?)

:)

[John Dong (jdong)]

Another example case: bug #192992 contains 88 comments, mostly "me too" or 20 duplicates of the same page-long stacktrace, or end-user hacks or other information not useful to developers. A comment, like number 86 which provides key insightful information on the bug, should be able to "stand out" either by collapsing all other comments or by highlighting it and providing a "highlighted comments only" view.

Add me to the list of people who would like to see this feature implemented. Otherwise, triaging high-impact bugs is progressively more difficult

[Morten Kjeldgaard (mok0)]

I agree that it is not a good idea to let users delete their comments, since this could destroy the documentation of the bug, and it could also confuse matters if others' comments are suddenly left unexplained.

On the other hand, like John writes above, there are many examples of meaningless and redundant comments that might as well be deleted. These are my thoughts, that concur a lot with some of the other ideas that have been reported earlier in this discussion.

(1) I suggest that the commenter should be able to _hide_ their comments from the standard view, marked with a small icon in the margin so it could be expanded.

(2) It should be possible to edit your own comments. I have often wished I could add or correct something; usually the very moment you've hit "Save Changes" you realize an oops was made :-) The system of "Previous Version" is already in place in the "Edit Description/Tags" menu, and should be expanded to also work for comments. This would save history, but also make a more sensible interface for the users.

(3) It would be useful to give priority to the most valuable comments through a system of "votes" like on the brainstorm site. It would allow users to dynamically vote comments "up" or "down" according to their relevance, and would address the situation described by jdong. In addition, this relevance often changes during the processing of a bug report. Perhaps users should be able to define a lower vote limit for comments they would like to see (like on SlashDot). Such a system could replace (1).

[era (era)]

You can already update a bug's description; the same facility and design could fruitfully be expanded to allow users to update their own comments. The fact that you leave a history of the change should already suffice to curb blatant abuse, although of course, there is still some room for a creative vandal to mess things up.

The "me too" case I think is more compelling than the "obsolete comments" scenario, although both can be handled by what is being proposed. Imagine if you could condense the first 14 comments into "multiple users confirmed this bug".

[era (era)]

(The ability to edit comments is also tangentially covered in bug 80895.)

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

Some aspects of this will be fixed by an upcoming change to let bug supervisors hide comments.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

User can hide their own comments. Project owner and ~registry members can hide comment too.