bug tracker "Processed: your mail" mails

[Drew Adams]

Below is a typical mail that gives the new status of several (unrelated) bugs at
once.

The Subject line indicates nothing about which bugs are involved - it says only
"Processed: your mails", which is meaningless (both "processed" and "your mails"
are without content or ambiguous). The Cc line gives the bug numbers, but not
their identifying subjects. In any case, who memorizes the bug numbers?

Whenever I receive one of these mails, I must open it and scan it to see if it
has anything to do with any bugs I submitted. I receive lots of these messages,
but only a minority concern bugs I've filed. That's a lot of opening and
scanning... And the bugs mentioned in such mails are unrelated - these mails are
just big sacks of n'importe quoi.

In this case, way, way, way, down near the bottom of this long mail I find this:

 > tags 670 moreinfo
 bug#670: 23.0.60; x-create-frame gives wrong-type-argument error
 There were no tags set.
 Tags added: moreinfo

Frankly, I have no idea what that means (is it asking me for more info?).

But what's important is that I had to scan this message to find the bug subject
line "x-create-frame gives wrong-type-argument error", which I can recognize as
a bug I filed. Or else I would have to remember that bug #670 is a bug that I
filed, and then look in the Cc field or the message body for all bug numbers
that I filed and find and recognize "#670" as one of them.

This is a lot of work. I suspect that many such status messages are simply
missed or ignored by bug filers.

Would it be possible to have a separate such status message per bug, instead of
grouping them like this? Then you can include the bug's subject in the Subject
line, instead of the opaque "Processed: your mail". And then you can target such
messages to those they concern, instead of broadcasting them.

Make it easier on the users, not on the tools. If these messages are sent to
people, it is presumably so that they read them and react to their content.
Making it easier on users will mean that you get more help from users. That is,
if you expect someone to read and react to a message, make it easy to
understand.

If, on the other hand, this is supposed to be only an internal message for
developers, then don't send it to the bug filers. Instead, send them a
user-friendly status message that lets them know that a given bug's status has
changed: has been closed, fixed, requires more info, and so on. IOW, send them
just the info you think or they think they need. And just for one bug.

Thanks.


-----Original Message-----
From: Emacs bug Tracking System
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 11:50 PM
To: Glenn Morris
Cc: Emacs Bugs; ns #574 #578 #586 #588 #589 #590 #593...
Subject: Processed: your mail

Processing commands for address@hidden:

> merge 678 693 698
bug#678: regexp problem in ldap.el
bug#693: regexp problem in ldap.el
bug#698: regexp problem in ldap.el
bug#696: regexp problem in ldap.el
Merged 678 693 696 698.

> tags 645 moreinfo
bug#645: 23.0.60; rng-after-change-function error when validation not started
There were no tags set.
Tags added: moreinfo

> reassign 593 emacs,ns
bug#593: Emacs.app crash
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug#595: [Emacs.app dev]: Emacs.app crash
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 588 emacs,ns
bug#588: 23.0.60; with-ns emacs crash
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 586 emacs,ns
bug#586: 23.0.60; ns-yes-or-no-p
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 574 emacs,ns
bug#574: 23.0.60; mac fonts in emacs-cvs don't work
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 578 emacs,ns
bug#578: 23.0.60; Cocoa, Font dialog doesn't set font size
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 589 emacs,ns
bug#589: 23.0.60; repeated crashes
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 590 emacs,ns
bug#590: emacsclient not working in Emacs.app
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 596 emacs,ns
bug#596: 23.0.60; crash while running visiting a file in a buffer
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 599 emacs,ns
bug#599: 23.0.60; Emacs hangs when trying to find file in split window
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 600 emacs,ns
bug#600: Subject: 23.0.60; Dialogue panel in saving options hangs Emacs.app
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 602 emacs,ns
bug#602: 23.0.60; Emacs.app crashes when trying to open new frame
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 605 emacs,ns
bug#605: 23.0.60; Cocoa Emacs crashes when Cmd-H is typed
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 606 emacs,ns
bug#606: 23.0.60; Cocoa Emacs crashes in ns_free_indexed_color
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug#609: 23.0.60; Cocoa Emacs crashes in ns_free_indexed_color
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 614 emacs,ns
bug#614: 23.0.60; Emacs.app does not let me select an entry from
mouse-buffer-menu
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 615 emacs,ns
bug#615: 23.0.60; tabbar.el 2.0 lets Emacs.app crash
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 616 emacs,ns
bug#616: 23.0.60; Emacs.app does not support SVG file type
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 620 emacs,ns
bug#620: 23.0.60; Bootstrapping with the GNUstep port impossible
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 655 emacs,ns
bug#655: 23.0.60; (NS/OSX:) Colorpicker, Menu abort() in eval()
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> reassign 659 emacs,ns
bug#659: 23.0.60;  X toolkit scroll bars for NS variant?
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

> tags 670 moreinfo
bug#670: 23.0.60; x-create-frame gives wrong-type-argument error
There were no tags set.
Tags added: moreinfo

> reassign 677 emacs,ns
bug#677: 23.0.60; emacs23 term on OS X 10.5.4
Warning: Unknown package 'ns'
bug reassigned from package `emacs' to `emacs,ns'.

>
End of message, stopping processing here.

Please contact me if you need assistance.

Don Armstrong
(administrator, Emacs bugs database)