Updates lacking descriptions

[Michael Schwendt]

On Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:15:04 -0700, Adam wrote:

> On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 17:56 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> 
> > For me it isn't.  I won't spend extra time on writing special summaries
> > for a test-update, if nobody contributes any testing. 
> 
> FWIW you almost certainly _are_ getting some testing. There are
> definitely users on -test-list who run with -updates-testing enabled
> permanently and hence run all updates-testing packages (that they have
> installed, anyway). In most cases, however, they don't give positive
> feedback when everything works, because the current mechanism makes it
> too clumsy (go to bodhi, log in because it _will_ have forgotten you
> again, find the update, type 'yay it works!' in the box, submit, rinse
> and repeat for the next twelve updates). That's a process problem, we
> need to make it easier to give a simple 'thumbs up' feedback.

All known already. Yet, even bodhi's bugzilla comments that place direct
links to the updates into bz tickets, are mostly ignored by bug
reporters. Perhaps the entire process is intimidating. The number of
automated bz comments posted by bodhi when an update is published for
multiple dists. The lack of knowledge about Fedora processes and web
interfaces like bodhi. The amount of expertise that is necessary to really
test an update. The fear to give a rushed +1 on an update that is broken
for other users.

Anyway, you've only reduced the number of people who actually would
do something with the update descriptions. => Less reason to spend
extra time on beautification of update descriptions. Too many updates.
I've called it a flood of updates before. Too many updates that
are pushed inspite of having gained 0 karma points during their
time in updates-testing.

Package %changelog "quality" could and should be improved first.
In particular in very important packages such as the kernel, which
contains entries like
 - Drop the correct patch to fix bug #498858
 - Additional fixes for bug #498854
and leaves it to the reader to fill in the gaps. Once downloaded
(or installed), the packages are not connected to bodhi anymore. => Less
reason to spend extra time on beautification of update descriptions in
bodhi without maintaining such details within the package.

Also, the typical "Version 1.2.3 is available" and "Please update to
1.2.3" bugzilla tickets just request an upgrade without pointing out any
highlights such an upgrade would bring with. Not even such users show
interest in specific reasons to upgrade, they just request the latest.
It's not wrong to assume they find Fedora boring without a steady
stream of updates to download and install.

> Where
> things are broken, negative feedback usually does come through (whenever
> someone sends something with broken dependencies to updates-testing, for
> instance, someone yells about it on test-list and in bodhi quite
> quickly, most of the time).

Bad example. Broken deps are obvious update breakage that prevent
users [and especially testers -- btw, I run with updates-testing
enabled, too] -- from installing the update packages. Save yourself
a comment on --skip-broken or alternative work-arounds. Still it needs
the separate extras-repoclosure runs to find and report all the
additional broken deps, which would not be reported in bodhi by
anyone at all.