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Re: Expiration period for feedback requests



Hello Rado,

 On Saturday, August 27, 2005 at 5:51:05 PM +0200, Rado Smiljanic wrote:

> now there have been quite a few bugs that were declared needing
> feedback. How long should we wait before we close them because of lack
> of verification or missing additional info?

    It depends: I'd say two monthes on average. This can vary: Less on
nearly sure non-bugs or fixed bugs, more during holidays.

    Closure on feedback lack obviously applies only to totally
unreproducable bugs that only the submitter experiences, and to sure
fixes. If there is the faintest chance someone else can analyse things
later, a suspected real bug but just rare or random, something that
vaguely looks plausible, or a fix that may not completely apply to the
case, then the bug must remain open.

    In fact a suspected real bug should probably remain open even if the
submitter replies he lost interest, changed config, or upgraded system,
thus has no more symptoms, and asks for closure.


    For reference, the developer documentation of the old BTS commented
about the "moreinfo" tag:

| moreinfo
| This bug can't be addressed until more information is provided by the
| submitter. The bug will be closed if the submitter doesn't provide
| more information in a reasonable (few months) timeframe. This is for
| bugs like "It doesn't work". What doesn't work?


Bye!    Alain.
-- 
Software should be written to deal with every conceivable error
        RFC 1122 / Robustness Principle