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?