[Python-Dev] No response to posts

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Steven D'Aprano writes:

 > I don't know. What percentage of new issues get ever get a response? My 
 > wild guess is that it's probably about 99.9%, but the 0.1% that don't 
 > remain languishing forever, skewing the statistics.

No guess needed, we have the data.  If the fraction "a" of issues ever
opened is still open, and 1 in 5 open issues has no responses, then
the fraction of issues that ever got a response is 4a/5 + (1 - a).
(This assumes that closing an issue counts as a response, which I
think is entirely reasonable.)

The actual value of a is currently 13.2%, which means that about 1/9 *
1/5 = one in 45 of new issues has never received any response.  IMO,
that's pretty good.  I don't think it's worth doing anything about,
beyond giving Mark and those who volunteer with him better tools for
their work.  But that much should be done (again IMO).

To add an anecdote to those already presented, back when I was
completely new to Internet-based software development, I had an Emacs
bug that was making my life miserable.  I really wanted to do the
Right Thing and support the GNU project, but it was the XEmacs
developers that responded with interest (but zero help beyond some
random suggestions that didn't pan out -- the guy who knew something
about it had a different X implementation and it worked for him).  You
can see the difference that response made to *my* life in my email
address.