Draft email to maintainers regarding Priority / Severity in Bugzilla

[Jerry Amundson]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 14:40 -0500, Jerry Amundson wrote:
>
>> >> If severity is supposed to mean "how bad a bug is for the reporter",
>> >> then ignoring the reporters assessment of that severity seems somewhere
>> >> between arrogant and counterproductive.
>> >
>> > Severity doesn't mean that.  Both severity and priority are fields for
>> > maintainers and not for the reporter.
>>
>> Says who?
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/page.cgi?id=fields.html#bug_severity
>>
>> Severity This field describes the impact of a bug.
>>
>> Urgent   This report is an urgent issue and should be fixes as soon as possible.
>> High       Problem due to crashes, loss of data, severe memory, leak, etc.
>> Medium  It's a bug that should be fixed eventually.
>> Low        Problem is minor loss of function, or other problem where
>> easy workaround is present.
>
> Think about it: what's the actual practical advantage gained by having a
> field set in Bugzilla which tells you how important the bug is to the
> reporter, rather than how important it is to the project? Who does that
> benefit, and how?

OK, I'm warming up to the idea. Sorry, old habits - I've always spent
more time reporting than triaging, and I don't see that changing
anytime soon.

So, switching to the proposed description:

Severity is used to describe how bad a bug is for the reporter, in the
context of the specific component:
* Urgent: Software is completely unusable, loses data, or the RPM
won't update properly. Frequent or commonly encountered crashes.
* High: Loss of important functionality, or usability problem
producing major frustration. Infrequent and un-reproducible crashes.
* Medium: Highly visible cosmetic defect, moderate usability problem,
loss of minor functionality, moderate loss of functionality with
workaround, or high priority request for enhancement. [default choice]
* Low: Minor cosmetic defect, minor usability problem, or low priority
request for enhancement.

I question the phrase, "... for the reporter ...", since it really
isn't for the reporter, correct?
Can, or will, the voting system come into play? Then reporters, and bz
account holders (e.g. Fedora/Red Hat *users*) don't lose all of the
emotional "points" gained by submitting the report in the first place.
We want reporters (users) to make use of bugzilla.redhat.com, and not
have them think of it as a black-hole of their personal time, where
these fields are only controlled by others.  As sort of a way of
giving something back emotionally, yet also providing feedback that
could sway the severity one notch higher, if the bug warrants it.

jerry
jerry