[SciPy-Dev] "Anonymous" bug reporting: useful?

[Robert Kern]

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 2:40 PM, Frédéric Bastien <nouiz at nouiz.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 5:37 AM, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 10:18 AM, Andreas Hilboll <lists at hilboll.de> wrote:
>>> I was wondering if it would be good if users could report bugs without
>>> having to sign up for a Github account.  From a technical viewpoint,
>>> this should be possible, using a dedicated email account, some
>>> server-side scripting, and the Github API.
>>>
>>> Do you have any feeling for how many bugs do not get reported because a
>>> user doesn't want to go through the hassle of creating an account just
>>> to report a bug?
>>>
>>> I have the feeling that it must be as simple as possible to report bugs.
>>>  And having to create an account (be it at Github or by signing up for a
>>> mailing list) is an obstacle to that.
>>>
>>> Any thoughts / ideas?
>>
>> I didn't realize that we had fixed all of the bugs that have already
>> been reported and our volunteers are pining away without any work to
>> do. ;-)
>>
>> More seriously, the problem has always been spam. Removing filters to
>> lower the barrier for honest bug reports also removes the filters for
>> much more spam. There are always tradeoffs, and I think we've settled
>> on a reasonable one. If we were getting no bug reports, that would be
>> a problem, but we're getting a few every day. That's a healthy amount.
>
> It is the first time I read that having bug report every few days is healthy :)

Bugs are inevitable. Quality bug *reports* are not. :-)

-- 
Robert Kern