Launchpad itself

"Yes, report in ______" is more harmful than useful

Bug #246041 reported by Matthew Paul Thomas
30
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Fix Released
Medium
Eleanor Berger
Launchpad itself 2.2.4

Bug Description

Whenever you encounter a bug report page containing the message "This bug isn't linked to ______. Would you like to report it here as well?" and a miscapitalized "Yes, report in ______" button, ~99% of the time it is because the bug used to be filed on the context you're looking at it from, but has since been moved elsewhere. Even if that move was incorrect, clicking "Yes, report it in ______" is the wrong way to revert it, because it will add a new context to the bug report, rather than changing the existing one. (This was done by mistake, for example, in bug 330143, bug 331311, and bug 331347.)

So the only situation in which the "Yes, report it in ______" button is useful is if, knowing that a bug report is currently filed on one context but should also be filed on another, you manually construct the URL of the bug report in the as-yet-unfiled context, and visit it. This is so incredibly unlikely, that the button is clutter that is probably doing more harm than good.

I suggest that the button and its alert be removed, and that visiting a bug report in a context for which it is not filed should instead return a 301 Moved Permanently redirect to a context for which it is filed.

Bug 287935 should be fixed at the same time as this bug. It may save time to fix bug 153763 at the same time as this bug. Fixing this bug would resolve bug 45015, bug 151251, and bug 346876..

See original description
Diogo Matsubara (matsubara)
Changed in malone:
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Matt Zimmerman (mdz) wrote :

I fully agree. In practice, this is a confusing side effect of changed URLs, and serves no useful purpose.

In addition to removing the alert, I think it should be easier to use launchpad.net/bugs/NNNNNN URLs rather than the package/product-specific ones. There's currently no link to that URL on the bug page, though it's typically the one I want to give out (not only because of this bug, but because it's shorter and permanent). If there's a separate bug about that, I'm interested in it as well.

Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)
description: updated
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Joey Stanford (joey) wrote : Re: "Yes, report it in ______" is more harmful than useful

I also agree as this has been confusing for a few people. I'm raising this to Medium and reseting to NEW so the bugs team triages this to their needs.

Changed in malone:
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: Confirmed → New
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Karl Fogel (kfogel) wrote :

Joining the "me too" club. I almost always want to hand out the launchpad.net/bugs/NNNNN URL, and they're what I record for myself too. Seriously, maybe those should be the default and the project-specific URLs should just redirect to them.

Revision history for this message
Barry Warsaw (barry) wrote :

+1. And while we're at it, can we get keyword-able shortcuts for merge proposals too? :)

Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

One bug per bug report, please. :-) Having launchpad.net/bugs/NNNNN as the base URL is touched on in bug 222958 and has a mini-spec at <https://dev.launchpad.net/ShorterBugPageUrls>. Shortening merge proposal URLs similarly does not yet have its own bug report, but is discussed in the truly depressing bug 317136.

Revision history for this message
Martin Pool (mbp) wrote :

Me too. If you do happen to want to either report it in multiple contexts or to reassign it both options are fairly easily available in the page.

Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Matt Zimmerman (mdz) wrote :

I've asked the Launchpad team to fix this bug.

Changed in malone:
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Björn Tillenius (bjornt) wrote : Re: [Bug 246041] Re: "Yes, report in ______" is more harmful than useful

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 10:39:43AM -0000, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> I've asked the Launchpad team to fix this bug.

It's a simple fix, so let's see if we can fit it into this cycle. The
simplest fix would be to simply add a redirect to a valid bug context,
and we could remove the NullBugTask code and the button in a separate
branch.

    milestone 2.2.4

Changed in malone:
milestone: none → 2.2.4
Eleanor Berger (intellectronica)
Changed in malone:
assignee: nobody → Tom Berger (intellectronica)
status: Triaged → In Progress
Revision history for this message
Diogo Matsubara (matsubara) wrote : Bug fixed by a commit

Fixed in devel r8287.

Changed in malone:
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
Björn Tillenius (bjornt)
Changed in malone:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
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