Launchpad itself

Project bug contacts should be able to mark particular comments as authoritative statements on behalf of the project

Bug #800149 reported by Emmet Hikory
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Triaged
Low
Unassigned

Bug Description

In the Ubuntu project, we have had a number of bugs filed that represent some topic with some controversy. In many cases, an authoritative position has been documented in the bug comments, after significant discussion. In some of these cases, this comment is ignored, or lost, perhaps because many readers of the bug are unaware that the comment is authoritative or that the comment author is normally responsible for making decisions of this nature.

We would like for ~ubuntu-bug-control (our bug contact) to be able to indicate, for each bug, that a specific comment was an authoritative response. Bugs so marked should have a distinctive layout/appearance/something to indicate the special status. For bugs with pages and pages of comments, it would be nice if this authoritative comment was clearly visible on the primary display page for the bug.

Note that this is distinct from the desire (in bug #81692 ) to attempt to show the "trustworthiness" of individual commenters. It is often the case that someone with broad range of discretion for authoritative statements will want to express an opinion for a controversial bug, without necessarily having it interpreted as the authoritative statement on behalf of the project.

Tags: bugs comments
Revision history for this message
Jonathan Lange (jml) wrote :

See also bug 522741 and bug 58670.

Changed in launchpad:
status: New → Triaged
importance: Undecided → Low
Revision history for this message
Robert Collins (lifeless) wrote : Re: [Bug 800149] Re: Project bug contacts should be able to mark particular comments as authoritative statements on behalf of the project

we do have the FAQ facility; is it perhaps suitable here?
Alternatively you can garden the bug summary to reflect the project
position.

Curtis Hovey (sinzui)
tags: added: bugs comments
Revision history for this message
Bryce Harrington (bryce) wrote :

I'd like to see a higher priority on this bug, modulo my questions below. Perhaps it deserves a LEP since it sounds like there are several related bugs that perhaps could be best addressed together.

I can definitely concur that especially with "me-too storm" bugs or "bikeshed painting" bugs, where huge numbers of comments are accumulating quickly, having a way to raise your voice above the din is important.

@Persia, a few questions:

1. Would bugs have a single authoritative statement, or would multiple comments be allowed to be authoritative?

2. As Robert points out, the bug summary can be edited, and the bug summary is always visible regardless of comment quantity, and will be at the top of the bug where it's most notable. There have been proposals to permit some formatting markup added for bug summaries. Do you think being able to specially highlight a portion of the bug summary with special formatting would suffice? If not, please explain.

3. There have been various proposals for voting up/down comments ala stackexchange. Do you think if such a facility were in place, would it sufficiently address this particular use case?

Revision history for this message
Robert Collins (lifeless) wrote :

Another data point - for searching we currently only search:
 - metadata like tags/status
 - the title
 - and the summary

So maintaining the bug summary is an important thing to do.

We don't (at this time) have a sufficiently high performance index to
permit searching of comments (we used to, but then Ubuntu got more
bugs... :))

Revision history for this message
Bryce Harrington (bryce) wrote :

On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 08:32:07PM -0000, Robert Collins wrote:
> Another data point - for searching we currently only search:
> - metadata like tags/status
> - the title
> - and the summary
>
> So maintaining the bug summary is an important thing to do.
>
> We don't (at this time) have a sufficiently high performance index to
> permit searching of comments (we used to, but then Ubuntu got more
> bugs... :))

That's a good point. It probably isn't critical that authoritative
statements be searchable however I imagine it's a strong nice to have.

Robert, is there already a LEP or master bug or other plan recorded
somewhere for adding markup to bug comments? I seem to recall reading
that but can't recall where. Seemed like it was associated with
discussion around setting off workarounds more noticeably.

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