Comment 18 for bug 3796

To me, this is the #1 wart in the launchpad bug system (yup, everything else works pretty well).

Take a look at bug 377476 (or even this one I guess). Now, go to every bug that's marked a duplicate. In each marked-as-dup bug, the "Status" column in the table at the top of the bug is something that a) Isn't correlated with the real status of the bug (i.e. whatever the "master" dup's status is and b) Doesn't indicate that it's a dup, so it's not obvious to the user that it's not correct. The only indication of dup is the small text in the top-right saying so (instead, this text should be a huge cue in the UI so it's obvious, not something tiny and hidden), plus the warning above the add-new-comment box, which could well be hidden under N pages of comments before the bug was marked as a dup.

A related feature I'd like to request is auditing of dup marking. There is nothing in the comment log indicating who marked the bug a dup, nor when they did it, nor why. Other status changes (e.g. New -> Invalid) at least give user/date/old-state/new-state. Marking a bug as a dup should make a similar comment entry. (I feel this would be better implemented as making "Duplicate" a status value, rather than adding new special-case code to make this comment entry when marking as a dup, but I'm not familiar with Launchpad code).