Comment 16 for bug 283539

2009/2/10 Tom Berger <email address hidden>:
>> ... there's no display of how many people it affects
>
> There is probably not going to be such a display (though you can get
> the numbers using the API). There is some other work going on using
> this data to provide a general measurement of bug "hotness", but
> there's pretty much a consensus that displaying the actual number of
> affected users in the web UI will not add, and possibly detract, from
> the usefulness of this feature.

I am not part of that consensus, and I think it's misguided.

The argument is that if we show the number of users who've clicked
"this affects me" it will create undue pressure on developers to fix
the bug with the largest number of affectsme.

It's a reasonable axiom that sometimes it's not best for developers
not to first fix the bug that affects the most users.

However, users already have ways to show that many of them want a bug
fixed, by repeated comments, or filing many duplicates. See bug
269656, 4 pages of subscribers and 547 comments, and many blog and
forum posts about it. Being able to quarantine some of that energy
into an affectsme count might make it less disruptive for developers.

There is no implication that affectsme is a vote, as it is in bugzilla.

If you can synthesize a "predicted importance" or "hotness" that's
more useful than any single measure that's great. If you're doing it
merely because you don't want to display a number for the reasons
above I think it's irrational.

On the other hand: affectsme has little clear effect on the page, it
hides useful data from developers who might want it, and it defers
something that would be useful now for something that's vague and more
complicated.

--
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>