Let's finalize a plan on handling old bug/fix/etc. messages in BFAV2 (was Re: Clean up BFAV)

Ken Causey ken at kencausey.com
Sat Jan 10 16:35:56 UTC 2004


We've discussed this long enough and I think there is at least a general
consensus that something should be done about automatically closing
older bug/fix/etc. reports.  To at least the general concept I've heard
no naysayers and have positive responses from Cees de Groot (who
suggested doing so in the first place), Julian Fitzell, Me, Stephane
Ducasse, Doug Way, Brent Vukmer, Marcus Denker, and Daniel Vainsencher. 
I wouldn't mind hearing from more of the Guides since this is a rather
drastic action (reversible but it would be a pain to do so).  But so far
it seems to be just a matter of working out the details.

If we can finalize the details soon I'm willing to take care of this.

First I would like to respond to a couple of the comments made:

Doug Way, said 'Hm, sending an email to squeak-dev for each one might be
overkill...?' and Daniel Vainsencher said 'As another compromise between
notifying only the author, and mail-bombing the list, we could mail
everyone that had participated in the thread around each particular
mail.'

I definitely do not want to mail-bomb the list and would not send any of
the messages to the squeak-dev list but instead to the squeak-harvest
list which no one in their right mind should be subscribed to (at least
not in digest mode).  Daniel suggests that everyone who participated in
a thread receive the email but that seems a bit extreme to me.  Let's
not forget that all of the closed groups will still be fully documented
in BFAV2 and nothing will disappear.  All one would need to do is to
choose to view closed groups.  At a minimum I think the originator of
each thread should be emailed and certainly the squeak-harvest list so
the change is incorporated in BFAV2.  Does anyone else agree with Daniel
that all thread participants should be emailed?

On a related issue I should point out one problem.  BFAV2 (and BFAV)
group messages simply by the subject.  There are quite a few examples of
completely seperate threads that BFAV2 groups together because they
don't have seperate subjects.  This of course means that a few thread
originators will not be notified because BFAV2 does not identify them. 
I don't think this is a major issue myself.

OK, so my proposed plan:

I will write some code to interface with BFAV2 and identify each thread
that has had no discussion since 12/31/2002.

For each such thread I will send a message to the thread originator and
the squeak-harvest list including a [closed] tag and a [timeout] tag.

The text of the message will explain for the thread originator's benefit
that the issue is being closed due to age and to help clean up the
archives.

It will also explain that they should review the issue and resubmit it
if it is still relevant.

Can I get confirmation from all those interested in harvesting that this
plan is acceptable?  Or proposed modifications?

Ken Causey

P.S. Anyone who would like to discuss the issue in a more realtime
manner can find me on #squeak on irc.freenode.net.

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