Launchpad itself

actions performed shortly before duplicate marking are notified to subscribers of the primary bug

Bug #106162 reported by Sitsofe Wheeler
44
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Fix Released
High
Unassigned

Bug Description

If someone posts a series of comments close together then quickly after marks that bug a duplicate of another (which I shall refer to as the original bug) then subscribers of the original bug will not only receive the duplication notice but they will also receive comments posted just before the duplication notice.

An example of this happening is when Bug #94290 was marked a duplicate of Bug #72018 . I received three emails:
2007-04-12 22:41 Re: [EDGY] firefox crashed [@ gtk_style_realize] [@ IA__gtk_style_attach] -- beou report
2007-04-12 22:41 Retraced Thread Stacktrace
2007-04-12 22:42 Re: /var/crash/usr_lib_firefox_firefox-bin.1000.crash (19.1)
when I should have only received
2007-04-12 22:42 Re: /var/crash/usr_lib_firefox_firefox-bin.1000.crash (19.1)
(which was the one containing
** This bug has been marked a duplicate of bug 72018
   MASTER Firefox Crash [@gtk_style_realize] [@nsFilePicker::Show]
)

Steps to reproduce:
1. Create a new bug A. Ensure you are subscribed to it.
2. Let someone else create a new bug B. Ensure you are not subscribed to it.
3. Post a series of comments to bug B.
4. Quickly Mark bug B a duplicate of bug A.

Expected results:
To receive mail that bug B has been marked a duplicate.

Actual results:
Separate mails about comments in bug B from before bug B was marked a duplicate of bug A in addition to notice that bug B has been marked a duplicate are received.

See original description
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)
description: updated
Changed in malone:
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote : Re: Comments sent shortly before duplicate marking are received by subscribers of original bug

This bug just caused every subscriber to bug 1 to receive about six extra spam messages about the erroneously-duplicated bug 89040.

Robert Collins (lifeless)
Changed in launchpad:
importance: Medium → High
summary: Comments sent shortly before duplicate marking are received by
- subscribers of original bug
+ subscribers of the primary bug
summary: - Comments sent shortly before duplicate marking are received by
+ actions performed shortly before duplicate marking are notified to
subscribers of the primary bug
Revision history for this message
Robert Collins (lifeless) wrote :

I think our code for what to notify to subscribers to the primary bug has evolved since this was filed. That said, bugs with hundreds of duplicates will generate terrible noise if we notify when a new duplicate is found. Its probably only interesting to the duplicate's subscribers that it has been folded into the primary bug.

That said, if we do 'notify subscribers to the primary bug of changes to duplicate bugs', then its entirely appropriate that these comments be forwarded: with ajax bug updates the ordering of changes like 'mark as duplicate' will often be not strictly semantic. E.g. someone may mark as duplicate then explain why, or vice versa.

That said, if two separate people comment within the timeout period for bug notifications, the only events that really makes sense to forward by this logic are the ones from the person that marked it as a duplicate. Which we don't do today.

So I'm going to downgrade this to low: most of the time that this happens it will be the person making the bug a duplicate; the noise from duplicates is a real issue but orthogonal to this fairly precise bug - and we probably need a LEP + re-review of the stories around notifications to change that.

tags: added: bugs email notifications
removed: lp-bugs
William Grant (wgrant)
Changed in launchpad:
status: Triaged → Fix Released
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