[Savannah-hackers] Re: [CoreTeam]Re: [support #102654] Abuse of the BUG tracking system

[Mathieu Roy]

Norbert Bollow <address@hidden> a tapoté :

> Rhys Weatherley <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> Instead, he has set a trap for me: if I fix these bugs, then he'll
>> submit more of the same trivialities (without patches).  Until the
>> point that he submits a borderline case that I need to make a
>> judgement call on.  As soon as I do so, he'll be back to flaming all
>> and sundry and claiming to be treated unfairly.  This wouldn't be
>> the first time.
>
> I'd like to quickly comment on this, as the statement "he has set a
> trap for me" may possibly sound far-fetched to someone who isn't
> familiar with mdupont's extensive history of harassing Rhys (and to
> a much lesser extent, also me and others in the DotGNU project).
>
> I can confirm that mdupont has played this kind of games multiple
> times already, and that he has made statements on irc which indicate
> very clearly that he has made it his goal to badly embarass Rhys.


I think it would be better to avoid closing a bug report with a
message that, from the outsider point of view, sounds very brutal.  

I understand your concerns and, despite the fact that I avoid saying
that something is true because many people agree on it (majority can
be wrong), I have no reason to interfere in how you manage your
development.

In other words, it would be best if you post a message explaining
rules for posting bugs reports, rules for anybody. If mdupont keeps
disregarding your rules, rules that you are entitled to write as
project admins, you can as well disregard his reports by referring to
these rules.

This way, it will not sound as a black-listing of someone due to a bad
historical account. It will be more simple, less ad hominem, it will
only be following rules decided for the common benefit, not
specifically against someone. And it opens the door for mdupont to
change his own behavior, it lets him a chance to understand that you
do not reject him but his way to report bugs.

Sometimes it is enough to have implicit rules. But when it looks
unclear what rules you are following, you have to make them explicit.

If you cannot, it would mean that your rules looks unfair even to
you. In that situation, it is worth making the effort to write fair
rules anyway.

Can you post a message with such rules? It can be only 4 lines, it 
does not needs to take long, it just have to address the problem of
mdupont messages in a neutral way; not focused on mdupont.

If you do, I would just tell mdupont in his support request that you
have deciced some rules for posting bug reports and that he have to
conform to that, which is fair.

Note that you do not need something too strict: for instance, such
rules would not necessarily mean that you'd _have to_ disregard each
report ignoring these rules but that you _can_ disregard such report.


What do you think?

Regards,


-- 
Mathieu Roy

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