Idea: "Timeout" submissions?

Daniel Vainsencher danielv at netvision.net.il
Thu Oct 2 22:38:11 UTC 2003


"Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok at cs.otago.ac.nz> wrote:
> As someone who has contributed a small but non-zero number of FIXes and
> ENHs, but is _frantically_ busy at the moment (12 hour work-day yesterday,
> for example), I really *don't* have time to find out which of my things
> have been adopted and which haven't.  (One of the things I've spent time
> on in the last week is testing 3.6 on Solaris; that's probably more
> important than any single FIX.)  But I will be greatly distressed if any
> of my contributions are simply spat into the wastebin.  I expect other
> people would feel the same way.
Without being spat anywhere (which is impossible, considering the
existance of archives, caches and so forth), many posts are being
ignored, not out of spite or stupidity, but out of limited resources and
a strategy different than you'd consider optimal. A different strategy
would result in things I care more about being ignored, which is why I
use the strategy I do. Marcus and I have been trying hard to make this
clearly enough known that those willing and capable to be part of the
solution can do so.

> I have no idea what you mean here.  ALL fixes are relevant; they should
> be considered from oldest to newest except for really REALLY urgent patches.
..
> EVERY old FIX is a specific useful one until *proven* otherwise.
..
> Surely it's obvious?  The older a BUG or FIX is, the more likely it is
> that other people have run into the same problem and also submitted a
> FIX or at least a BUG report for it.  It's not that the older ones are
> more _serious_, it's just that they've been around for longer.
You're ignoring two things -
1. The timestamp we're talking about is equal to the late post that
refers to the fix. Therefore, if anyone else bothered to comment on the
fix, that will make the fix as "recent" as the latest comment. Bug fixes
with lots of interest are considered recent.
2. Looking at fixes to determine their value takes time we don't have.
Therefore, only some are evaluated. The order is not old to newer. You
can affect this order by helping out.

Daniel



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