Comment 8 for bug 400215

On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 04:52:01AM -0000, Jonathan Lange wrote:
> I don't see the value in increasing the visibility of the merge
> proposal's numeric identifier.

I don't think the point about this bug report is to increase the
visibility of the numeric identifier. It's about making it easier to use
the URLs in e-mail and IRC. When looking at a merge proposal e-mail
notificaiton, I sometimes want to go to the web UI to have a closer
look. Most of the time I have to resize my mail window, since the URL
doesn't fit in one line.

> To me, the single most important thing about a merge proposal is the
> branch that's being proposed to be merged. That's how I think of the
> proposal and that's how I talk about it to others. The name of the
> branch has a meaning within the context of my project, the number is an
> arbitrary, meaningless identifier.

Still, I seldom see people giving links to branches when asking someone
for opinions on a merge proposal. That tells me that the link to the
merge proposal is actually useful.

> I also think this ranks very low on the list of things we can do to
> improve the usability of the code review system.

You should also consider the cost of doing this. Even though it's low
priority, it can still make sense to do if it's really cheap to do. What
else could you do, that would be of the same cost, but be of more value?

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