Make it possible to search for bugs affecting me

Bug #283539 reported by Martin Pool
266
This bug affects 50 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

If I choose "Does this bug affect you" and confirm the following dialog there is no visible effect: nothing on my bugs page, nothing on the main bugs page, nothing on the bug activity log.

update: it now increments a counter, but there is no page listing bugs that affect you, and no list of people affected by a particular bug. bug 323000 asks for that.

Related branches

Revision history for this message
Caroline Ford (secretlondon) wrote :

No list of how many people are affected either. Is it just cosmetic?

We shouldn't have this on the live site if it doesn't actually do anything (yet).

Revision history for this message
Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

You can already sort bugs by the number of affected people. That's a start (at least I hope to see much more).

Revision history for this message
Shirish Agarwal (shirishag75) wrote : Re: [Bug 283539] Re: +affectsmetoo has no visible effect

Lionel,
 how are you able to see that? I'm on the edge server Launchpad 2.1.12 (r7568)
and I'm not able to see how many people are affected by a bug (as a
user/reporter)

Just a random bug which I subscribed to just.

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/131094
--
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          Shirish Agarwal
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Revision history for this message
Eleanor Berger (intellectronica) wrote : Re: +affectsmetoo has no visible effect

Shirish, you can't see the number of affected users in the web UI (and will probably never be able to) but you can now sort bug listings by the number of affected users, which should allow you to see which bugs are affecting the most people.

Revision history for this message
Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

You cannot see that number (which is odd), you can only sort bugs :
- clic on the "bug" tab on this page
- clic on the "by importance" search menu. The last options is "by number of affected users"

Revision history for this message
Marius Kruger (amanica) wrote :

This bug affects me, and I can't see the number of other people it affects.
@Tom why will this never happen?
I think it will really be useful, so please figure out a way to show this to us. pretty please.

Revision history for this message
Luke Plant (spookylukey) wrote :

I assumed I would be able to use this feature to track bugs that affect me. But in fact I can't, which is really annoying - there is a kind of implicit promise of usefulness in the UI, a promise which is broken.

Revision history for this message
Christian Reis (kiko) wrote :

Ah, fair enough, that is definitely a good request -- a listing of bugs that are reported to affect you. Perhaps using that as your default listing?

Revision history for this message
Eleanor Berger (intellectronica) wrote : Re: [Bug 283539] Re: +affectsmetoo has no visible effect

> Ah, fair enough, that is definitely a good request -- a listing of bugs
> that are reported to affect you. Perhaps using that as your default
> listing?

I'm not sure if this would make a good default list - not all the bugs
that interest you will be ones marked as affecting you.

What we should _definitely_ do is add this option to the advanced bug search.

Revision history for this message
Graham Binns (gmb) wrote :

> What we should _definitely_ do is add this option to the advanced bug
> search.

Would it be worth adding http://bugs.launchpad.net/people/+me/+affects
or something? It's relatively simple to do.

Revision history for this message
Oliver Gerlich (ogerlich) wrote : Re: +affectsmetoo has no visible effect

> Would it be worth adding http://bugs.launchpad.net/people/+me/+affects
> or something? It's relatively simple to do.

That would be quite an improvement, so people can already take advantage of the affectsmetoo stuff. Adding better integration might be nice in the long run, but wouldn't be so pressing I think.

Revision history for this message
Martin Albisetti (beuno) wrote :

I think that's a great start, and would give the feature some more visibility.
Go Graham, go!

Revision history for this message
Martin Pool (mbp) wrote : Re: [Bug 283539] Re: +affectsmetoo has no visible effect

It should definitely be added to the default "my bugs" page too.

The other thing users would reasonably expect from "affects me too" is
that it acts as a kind of lightweight subscription: they'd be told
when the state changes but not about every single action that
generates subscription mail.

This is potentially a really nice feature if it can get unblocked...

--
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>

Changed in malone:
importance: Undecided → Medium
milestone: none → 2.2.2
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Martin Pool (mbp) wrote :

2009/2/10 Tom Berger <email address hidden>:
> ** Changed in: malone
> Importance: Undecided => Medium
> Status: New => Triaged
> Target: None => 2.2.2
>
> ** Summary changed:
>
> - +affectsmetoo has no visible effect
> + Provide a personal listing of bugs affecting a the user

OK, but there is more to the bug than this: there's no display of how
many people it affects, and allow sorting by number affected.

--
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>

Revision history for this message
Eleanor Berger (intellectronica) wrote :

> ... there's no display of how many people it affects

There is probably not going to be such a display (though you can get
the numbers using the API). There is some other work going on using
this data to provide a general measurement of bug "hotness", but
there's pretty much a consensus that displaying the actual number of
affected users in the web UI will not add, and possibly detract, from
the usefulness of this feature.

> and allow sorting by number affected.

That's already possible.

Revision history for this message
Martin Pool (mbp) wrote :

2009/2/10 Tom Berger <email address hidden>:
>> ... there's no display of how many people it affects
>
> There is probably not going to be such a display (though you can get
> the numbers using the API). There is some other work going on using
> this data to provide a general measurement of bug "hotness", but
> there's pretty much a consensus that displaying the actual number of
> affected users in the web UI will not add, and possibly detract, from
> the usefulness of this feature.

I am not part of that consensus, and I think it's misguided.

The argument is that if we show the number of users who've clicked
"this affects me" it will create undue pressure on developers to fix
the bug with the largest number of affectsme.

It's a reasonable axiom that sometimes it's not best for developers
not to first fix the bug that affects the most users.

However, users already have ways to show that many of them want a bug
fixed, by repeated comments, or filing many duplicates. See bug
269656
, 4 pages of subscribers and 547 comments, and many blog and
forum posts about it. Being able to quarantine some of that energy
into an affectsme count might make it less disruptive for developers.

There is no implication that affectsme is a vote, as it is in bugzilla.

If you can synthesize a "predicted importance" or "hotness" that's
more useful than any single measure that's great. If you're doing it
merely because you don't want to display a number for the reasons
above I think it's irrational.

On the other hand: affectsme has little clear effect on the page, it
hides useful data from developers who might want it, and it defers
something that would be useful now for something that's vague and more
complicated.

--
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>

Revision history for this message
Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount) wrote : Re: Provide a personal listing of bugs affecting a the user

I would also add that, as a developer using Launchpad, I *want* to see the number of affected users by a bug. So choosing what's best for me is pure non-sense. If I don't want to care about the affected users, I will just choose to ignore this.

Revision history for this message
Martin Pool (mbp) wrote :

> It's a reasonable axiom that sometimes it's not best for developers not to first fix the bug that affects the most users.

(Inadvertent double negative.)

> I would also add that, as a developer using Launchpad, I *want* to see the number of affected users by a bug. So choosing what's best for me is pure non-sense. If I don't want to care about the affected users, I will just choose to ignore this.

Maybe Launchpad could start by just publishing the number, and see if developers complain?

Revision history for this message
Steve Alexander (stevea) wrote :

@kiko: I love that idea. It's a "how screwed am I, personally, at this moment" view. I would use that all the time when I'm in the role of a user of open source software, rather than a project manager or open source developer.

Revision history for this message
Steve Alexander (stevea) wrote :

@martin pool: yes, I would use that all the time in all my roles!

Revision history for this message
Christian Reis (kiko) wrote : Re: [Bug 283539] Re: +affectsmetoo has no visible effect

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 02:50:56AM -0000, Martin Pool wrote:
> I am not part of that consensus, and I think it's misguided.

I understand you disagree, but as a start, bug hotness is what we will
invest time in.

> If you can synthesize a "predicted importance" or "hotness" that's
> more useful than any single measure that's great. If you're doing it
> merely because you don't want to display a number for the reasons
> above I think it's irrational.

It's more the former with a little bit of the latter.
--
Christian Robottom Reis | [+55 16] 3376 0125 | http://launchpad.net/~kiko
                        | [+55 16] 9112 6430 | http://async.com.br/~kiko

Revision history for this message
Caroline Ford (secretlondon) wrote :

On 09/02/2009, Tom Berger <email address hidden> wrote:
> > ... there's no display of how many people it affects
>
> There is probably not going to be such a display (though you can get
> the numbers using the API). There is some other work going on using
> this data to provide a general measurement of bug "hotness", but
> there's pretty much a consensus that displaying the actual number of
> affected users in the web UI will not add, and possibly detract, from
> the usefulness of this feature.

I think making it so that you need an extra program (using the API) to
get any information is a really negative step. Just extra barriers
etc.

Changed in malone:
milestone: 2.2.2 → none
Revision history for this message
Dominic Evans (oldmanuk) wrote : Re: Provide a personal listing of bugs affecting a the user

Can we have some example python using python-launchpadlib to display a list of all the bugs in a particular project, sorted by 'number of users affected by' and displaying the actual 'number of users affected by' ?

Revision history for this message
Dominic Evans (oldmanuk) wrote :

I actually started to put together my own sample using launchpadlib to do this. WIP (e.g, hard-coded for gwibber) code is on my branch at https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~oldman/launchpadlib/samples

Revision history for this message
Bryce Harrington (bryce) wrote :
Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)
summary: - Provide a personal listing of bugs affecting a the user
+ Provide a personal listing of bugs affecting the user
Deryck Hodge (deryck)
tags: added: story-bug-q-and-a
Deryck Hodge (deryck)
tags: added: story-bug-heat
removed: story-bug-q-and-a
Revision history for this message
Eleanor Berger (intellectronica) wrote :

The solution we've implemented is an additional parameter to advanced bug searches, allowing the user to limit the results to bugs affecting them. This solution provides the desired functionality without adding unnecessary complexity to the user interface. Additionally the result set may be confusing because it includes some bugs you have reported.

Changed in malone:
status: Triaged → In Progress
summary: - Provide a personal listing of bugs affecting the user
+ Make it possible to search for bugs affecting me
Deryck Hodge (deryck)
Changed in malone:
status: In Progress → Fix Committed
milestone: none → 10.01
Curtis Hovey (sinzui)
Changed in malone:
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Martin Pool (mbp) wrote :

It's true there is an option (three pages down) in the advanced bug search form, but I don't think it actually fixes this bug.

If I go to https://bugs.launchpad.net/~mbp/ then into "advanced" then click "show only bugs affecting me" then I don't get a list of all bugs affecting me. It seems that this acts as an additional filter, so that I'm only shown bugs to which I'm subscribed which _also_ affect me. Or perhaps it's more complex. This might be useful as a filter on a product bug list but it's no good on a person's bug list.

What I think people want is that on https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/~mbp/ they should see an additional option in the filter portlet saying "List affecting bugs".

We can file a separate followon bug for that if you want.

Revision history for this message
Deryck Hodge (deryck) wrote :

Hi, Martin. Yes, if you don't mind, please file a new bug for that addition to the personal bug pages. I think it will be easier to track that as a separate issue.

Thanks, man!

Cheers,
deryck

Revision history for this message
Martin Pool (mbp) wrote :

Actually this does exist as bug 323000, sorry for the noise.

Martin Pool (mbp)
description: updated
Martin Pool (mbp)
description: updated
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