Of course, database like queries are a bonus of issue trackers...
Andreas' lightwight model (trunk) was to enable direct commit without
issue/enhancement tracing.
It was a rather pragmatic approach to reduce harvesting bottleneck and
given the fact mantis was not that successfull.
It works quite well except for these contributions not getting in trunk.

What i don't like:
- a single TreatedInbox for both accepted/rejected contributions
- no dedicated place to discuss contributions, provide rationale,
gather scattered mailing list discussions (think about half year
timespan).

To prevent contributions from rotting I can imagine two strategies:
- automatically reject outdated contributions to a StaledInbox
- automatically accept outdated contributions to trunk
a bit like some administration having a maximum delay to answer your queries :)

Nicolas

2011/4/13 Colin Putney <colin at wiresong.com>:
> Ugh, slip of the finger sent that out before it was ready.
>
> On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 9:02 AM, Colin Putney <colin at wiresong.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 8:23 AM, Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> My only question is:  how does Mantis keep things from getting lost?
>>>
>>> I use gmail, which serves as the primary interface to communicating
>>> with all Squeak lists and a Google-backed search capability.  I can
>>> just search for the version-name and instantly have a list of "all the
>>> information" available about that version?
>>>
>>> Now I would have to have an additional place to check for information?
>>>
>>> I appreciate trying to keep our inbox clean, but the treated Inbox is
>>> meant to "keep things around".  So if we simply reply to the original
>>> submission with something like,
>>>
>>>    "No activity on this for 6 months, moving to Treated."
>>>
>>> Then that goes into the mail archive, which is searchable, and no need
>>> to bring in another tool..??
>>
>> There are several issues here:
>>
>> One, not everybody uses Gmail. Some people can't use Gmail and others
>> have good reasons for choosing not to. Let's not create a system that
>> excludes them.
>>
>> Two, text search isn't very reliable as a way to find "all the
>> information." Yes, gmail has pretty good search capabilities. I use it
>> exactly the same way you do. But some issues don't have a set of
>> keywords that identify them precisely, and the effectiveness of
>> specific search terms changes over time. I used to be able to do a
>> search for "Cog" to get a good summary of Eliot's high level design
>> ideas and theoretical musings about VM design. But now that people are
>> actively using it, the term comes up all over the place and the signal
>> is drowned in the noise.
>>
>> Three, even if we decide that mail search is fine for gathering "all
>> information" about a particular issue, that's not the only kind of
>> query we need to do. How would you answer the following questions with
>> Gmail?
>>
>
> - How many submissions to the inbox were integrated into Squeak 4.2?
> - What issues are still pending for Squeak 4.3?
> - What submissions have been moved to treated for lack of interest?
>
> This is the kind of thing that Mantis is good at. I'm cleaning up the
> the OmniBrowser issues on Mantis precisely so I can put together a new
> release that resolves all outstanding issues and works well on Squeak
> trunk. Relying on email for that is just not feasible. For Squeak as a
> whole it would be even less feasible, given the greater size, scope
> and number of people involved.
>
> Colin
>
>