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[Python-Dev] Proposed revision of PEP 3 (usingthe issue tracker)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Mon Feb 25 03:46:46 CET 2008 
"Nick Coghlan" <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:47C1074E.7060100 at gmail.com...
|Martin v. Löwis wrote:
|> One issue to consider is also politeness. People sometimes complain that
|> they feel treated unfair if their report is declared "invalid" - they
|> surely believed it was a valid report, at the time they made it.

|I agree with Martin for both of these - 'works for me' and 'out of date'
|convey additional information to the originator of the bug, even if they
|don't make a signifcant difference from a development point of view.

It seems to me that the place to convey real information to the originator 
is in the closing comment -- as the PEP requires. "Works for me' can hardly 
work if we cannot agree on the meaning.  And why is its usage restricted to 
'developers' as opposes to 'reviewers' like me?

In any case, I have a more radical proposal:  drop the disposition field 
altogether and split the 'closed' status into two.  First, closed because 
we have completed a non-empty set of actions (changes); in other words, 
'finished'.  Second, closed because we decide not to do anything; in other 
words, 'rejected'.

This proposal eliminates altogether the impoliteness of 'invalid'. 
'Invalid' is an possibly debateble opinion (even though backed by facts) 
about the originators issue.  'Rejected' is a non-debateble and truthful 
statement of a decision to not act.

This proposal also eliminates the the redundancy between a non-empty 
disposition and the 'closed' status implied by such.  It is not uncommon 
for people to mark a disposition and explain the reason for closure while 
leaving the status as 'open'.  Or to close and explain and leave the 
disposition blank.

Terry Jan Reedy
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