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Although I'm on a strict eMail diet I can't resist to write a short note:

Did you ever play the Infocom game ``Bureaucracy, A Paranoid Fantasy''
(written by Douglas Adams)? Sometimes I think the harvesting process
is a remake of that textadventure. "Tag it with [ZORK], compress it
with KNORTZ but never with KNORZT and send it to the BFAV. Then ..."
You can't blame people for not loving bureaucracy. If the harvesting
is not working than it is the process that is flawed!

To be a bit more positive here just a quick thought that may or may
not work:

How about we move all the bug reports, fixes and suggestions for
enhancements to the mantis server? Then a casy study could be like this

- - user creates a new report with the serverity *feature*
(=enhancement)  describes the enhancement and attaches the code. Now
the user knows that his thingy got registered somewhere and does not
silently dissapear in a mail archive....

- - harverster looks at this entry later on, sees that no test is
included and puts this report on hold (=feedback) and adds form Z9 to
the report

Z9:
"Your enhancement was put on hold because we decided to only accept
new enhancement if they include a minimal test. Look here for an easy
HowTo for writing unit tests and ...." (this gets automagically mailed
to the reporter)

- - user reads the mail and now knows that somebody looked at his
stuff(!) and that there is a problem. If he cares about the thingy I
bet he will go the extra mile and provide a test.

- - next harvester sees that there is now a test for the enhancement,
changes the status of the report to whatever, test the thingy and can
add a note that appoves or declines it

I think when to reject or to hold a report should be briefly layed out
in some kind of policy doc that should be agreed on once (by the
harvesters?) and placed on a swiki for public notice.

A sender of a mail that shows up in the mailing list with a subject
tagged with [(ENH|FIX|BUG|GOODIE)] should get (once) an auto reply
which tells him to use mantis. This auto reply should of course
include form Z9'.

Alex
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