Not possible to prevent people from registering blueprints or bugs on a project

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

The Ubuntu Software Center project does not use Launchpad Blueprints, for obvious reasons.

<https://blueprints.launchpad.net/software-center> says that "software-store does not use Launchpad for planning or documentation." Apart from getting our name wrong, this is correct.

Unfortunately, I just discovered that <https://launchpad.net/software-center/+assignments> listed 19 supposed "specifications" (all of which I have now obsoleted or moved), and still lets people "Register a blueprint".

This is harmful to the project, because it suggests we accept input in a way that we never actually receive.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

The blueprints were registered before the link was removed from the UI a few weeks ago.

This relates to bug 34343 where users can retarget a bug or blueprint to a project that does not use the Launchpad service.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Maybe one link was removed, but the link on <https://launchpad.net/software-center/+assignments> is still there.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

How did you find that page? I do not believe there are any links to it.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

My best guess is that Google found it a year ago before we realized we needed to turn off Blueprints, and no longer cares that it's not linked from anywhere automated. So now it's one of the "1 → 6 of 5 pages" listed on <https://launchpad.net/+search?field.text=%22ubuntu+software+center%22+%22blueprint+assignments%22&field.actions.search=Search>.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

Thank you. While disabling lots of pages because of the state of the Lp service is hard, I think we could create a rule that adds noindex,nofollow to the pages of unused services. We can investigate effort needed to prevent users from adding or retargeting to work items to unused services.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I care about Google indexing the page much less than I care that the page has a "Register a blueprint" link.