Comment 13 for bug 290101

I spent a few minutes yesterday imagining: Would Bugs work well without "Incomplete"? What would happen if it didn't exist? Triagers would still ask questions necessary for them to be able to reproduce a bug. Usually, they'd leave the report in "New" status while they waited for an answer. Occasionally they might use "Invalid" instead, with instructions for the reporter to reopen the report if they got around to providing the missing information. A little time would be wasted whenever a triager opened a "New" bug report and discovered that another triager had already asked for more information only a short time ago. So, that's the first function of "Incomplete": to save triagers a little time.

After some period without response, triagers would mark these reports as Invalid. The period would be inconsistent between projects and triagers (some might just mark reports as Invalid immediately), and individual reporters might get upset with those triagers. So, that's the second function of "Incomplete": to make the expiry process consistent and impersonal.

Finally, sometimes reporters would provide the missing information for a report that had only recently been marked Invalid, but would not remember (or know how) to reopen it, and their response would be forgotten. So that's the third function of "Incomplete": to automate reopening when missing information is provided.

These functions lead me to two conclusions: (1) if the reporter comments in an Incomplete bug report, it should always reopen, and (2) if they don't, it should always expire. We shouldn't need project-specific flags for those things; if that's not the behavior you want, there's little reason for you to use "Incomplete" in the first place.

I think that would solve, as Mary Gardiner said, 75% of the problem. Much of the other 25% could be caught by some sort of "Reopen in {project name}" checkbox, appearing for non-reporters below the comment field when commenting on an Incomplete bug report. I don't think there needs to be anything more elaborate, like a special field for what information is required. (After all, if a triager *doesn't* properly explain what information is required, and the reporter replies by saying "I don't understand what you're asking for", that comment will automatically reopen the bug report anyway.)

There are other problems that fall under the general heading of "Incomplete" being difficult to understand, mainly people abusing it for "this needs design work" or "I know it's a bug but I'm expecting the reporter to tell me how to fix it". But I don't think that's what this bug is about, so it can wait for another day.