action 122 - proposal for submitting comments on bugzilla defects

This note is in response to action 
http://www.w3.org/2005/06/tracker/sml/actions/122 , proposal for 
submitting comments on issues for which bugzilla defects are already 
opened.

Context for this proposal:

The SML workgroup uses bugzilla defects to track any open issues that may 
result in editorial changes to be applied to the SML core or IF drafts. 
Once the issue identified by a bugzilla defect is discussed and agreement 
reached within the group, the editors are asked to make the required 
editorial updates based on these discussions.

Issue addressed by this proposal:
Workgroup members often make comments and suggestions on issues addressed 
in a bugzilla defect by sending notes to the public list. These comments 
are not attached to the corresponding bugzilla.
There are a few issues with this approach:
1. For defects marked ?editorial? or ?needsReview?, editors could miss 
some important comments related to the actual proposal. 
When working on an editorial defect, the editor is left with the task of 
browsing the public list and finding all comments related to the defect he 
is trying to address. This is a tedious task and highly error prone since 
it is very easy to miss some comments if comments are made in notes not 
having the defect info in the note?s subject. Also, the editor may 
mistakenly skip over some of those notes, if notes have the same subject.
2. For ?needsAgreement? and ?needsReview? defects,  workgroup members can 
miss some of the comments and as a result fail to answer/review them. 
To have a meaningful discussion over an open issue, the thread of 
discussion should be kept handy so that somebody can browse to get the 
latest comments and see the state of the discussion. It is very hard to do 
that in a productive way by just using public list's archived information.

 
Proposal:
Every discussion related to an existing bugzilla defect should be recorded 
in that bugzilla as a comment.  The reply should not be sent to the 
mailing. 
The state or keywords for that defect does not matter; as long as the 
comment is made to an existing bugzilla defect, the comment should go into 
bugzilla and not the public list.
Note that the mailing list will pick up this comment since bugzilla sends 
an email notification to the public list on any comment or status change.

By using bugzilla to record comments on a defect, the discussion thread 
can be very easily followed as comments follow a linear pattern; every 
comment comes after the other and somebody can easily reply to a comment ( 
adding comment #nb ) or just inspect the state of the discussion.
It is also easy for an editor to point to the comment #nb when describing 
why some changes have been applied to the document.

See below the chart describing this proposal 




Thank you,
Valentina Popescu
IBM Toronto Labs
Phone:  (905)413-2412         (tie-line  969)
Fax: (905) 413-4850