Bugs filed by email are more likely to be dupes

[Jonathan Lange]

Many people file bugs by email: it's often faster and it can be done offline. However, because users aren't taken through the "Did you mean to file ..." wizard, the bugs are more likely to be duplicates. This is a pain.

I don't know what can be done to fix this. The problem would be reduced if bugs had a "find bugs that might be dupes of this" search feature, which I believe has already been filed.

RobertCollins:--

I file bugs by email all the time. It would be lovely to be told 'it
looks like there is a dup of this new bug' with enough detail to decide
if I need to look more closely or not. As it is, I sometimes file dups
and don't know I have.

This could be pretty low key - run the dup finding code when creating a
bug by email and send a reply back, but still make the bug. Or it could
be sophisticated with the bug made private (without even security team
seeing it) until I confirm that it isn't a dup. I think low key would be
a great improvement in and of itself.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

2010/1/28 Jonathan Lange <email address hidden>:
> Public bug reported:
>
> Many people file bugs by email: it's often faster and it can be done
> offline. However, because users aren't taken through the "Did you mean
> to file ..." wizard, the bugs are more likely to be duplicates. This is
> a pain.
>
> I don't know what can be done to fix this. The problem would be reduced
> if bugs had a "find bugs that might be dupes of this" search feature,
> which I believe has already been filed.

I guess you could have a bot that replies by mail to say "maybe this
is a dupe of X or Y or ξ", perhaps putting that into a bug comment.
However that would be secondary to having an actual on-demand dupe
finder (which would be great.)

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

[Graham Binns (gmb)]

> I guess you could have a bot that replies by mail to say "maybe this
> is a dupe of X or Y or ξ", perhaps putting that into a bug comment.
> However that would be secondary to having an actual on-demand dupe
> finder (which would be great.)
>

That's really not all that hard to do (he says, knowing he's shooting
himself in the foot as he does it).

It wouldn't be terribly hard to repurpose the show-similar-bugs view
from the +filebug process and embed it in the bug page. The hard parts
would be a) finding the best way to do it for a bug with multiple
tasks and b) getting the UI right on an already clutted page. Maybe it
could work as a YUI picker / finder...

[Vikram Dhillon (dhillon-v10)]

Another thing we could do here is to hold the posting of the messages for like let's say 5 mins. and during this time check the bugs using Did you mean to file wizard and then if its duplicate don't post it otherwise post it

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

I don't know that a time limit is needed so much as a round trip with the submitter. One could include a 'nodupcheck' flag in the submission mail to permit totally automated filing. I'm going to edit the description of this bug to include the things I suggested in my dupe :).