Comment 8 for bug 567004

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 04:08:40PM -0000, Deryck Hodge wrote:
> My preference would be to do something along the lines of bug 568169 and
> add the ability to distinguish work from API clients in bugs. Then, we
> could couple that with adding an email header and a notification setting
> to turn of or filter notices from api clients. The other issues raised
> here -- noise from changes to title, description, or adding tags --
> should be configurable by themselves, regardless of whether or not that
> change is minor.
>
> Would that be acceptable, rather than a "minor change" flag? I don't
> generally care for these kinds of flags.

Hmm, well I'm certainly open to better ways to solve this, I totally
agree adding flags is probably sub-optimal.

One thing I like about the scheme you outlined is it would cover actions
by prolific human triagers as well as scripts.

I think having an email header to identify API scripts is great idea,
and definitely agree that would help. I'm uncertain about the idea of
turning on/off notices from API clients though... it seems to be too
broad of a stroke. There are definitely some API scripts which do stuff
worth suppressing (adding tags and the like), but there are also many
whose output should not be missed (such as ones asking reporters for
files, or that mark bugs expired).

Being able to configure noise from changes to bug fields would better
address the crux of the problem. But I wonder if it might also be too
broad of a stroke... For instance, I probably care more if the original
reporter changed the description/title/tags than if a script did it.
But that concern aside, I think this is also something which could help
a lot.