374002 - Remove or rename vote support

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(bugzilla.mozilla.org :: Administration, task)

Description

[Daniel Mota Leite]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20070110 Firefox/2.0.0.1
Build Identifier: 

As per bug #18574 , votes are useless to mozilla, so they should be removed, as they create the false sense that users can help choose anything.

bug 18574 is just one example, there are many bugs with high votes and anyone knows that developers dont choose bugs to fix by their votes.

So all being useless, remove it from bugzilla.mozilla.org (of course, keep if in the source, as other projects may listen more their own users)


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.vote
2.vote more
3.even more votes

Actual Results:  
nothing appends

Expected Results:  
anything other than being ignored

and no, i'm not kidding, votes should be really be removed from mozilla.org projects

Comment 1

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

I don't have an opinion on the issue at this time, but I'm going to vote for this bug because irony demands it. :-) [You may now commence arguing about the meaning or "irony".]

Comment 2

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

votes are enabled/disabled on a per-product basis, and are an administrative option within the admin UI, not something I'll have to hack on the back end for.

Comment 3

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

We should keep votes, because "I want this too" comments in the bug actually make the bug harder to fix, since it's harder to find the technical information within the bug needed to fix it.  Votes redirect those comments to something that's queryable.  I actually do sometimes look at lists of most-voted-for bugs -- it's interesting and potentially useful information, although not particularly trustworthy, since some bugs are slashdotted / dugg / etc.  (The comments that people would make instead have all the same flaws as votes, and none of the advantages.)

Comment 4

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

yeah but how are you going to get those people to use votes instead of commenting? cuz you know most of them will vote and then comment to tell us so, at least the annoying ones do anyway.

Comment 5

[Raccoon]

I just voted in favor of removing votes.  #5!!!

Comment 6

[M Lopez-Ibanez]

I voted for this because voting gives a false sense of participation and openness. 

Comment 7

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

Can't help but wonder why do you keep voting (and saying that you voted), even though you now "know" that nobody looks at the votes...

Re comment 4: see, there are 6 votes and only two comments from those who voted. We can conclude that the voting feature reduces bugzilla noise by 60% :)

Comment 8

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

there are 3 comments from those who voted, and you can't be sure the other 3 would have commented, had they not been able to vote.

Comment 9

[Daniel Mota Leite]

i think its better to finally implement bug 225751 than to keep votes, votes are useless in mozilla.org, so lets admit it and disable then.
by having bug 225751 fixed, each person could setup their filter to the fields that they require, making the noise level thresholds configurable for each user.

yes, user should use bugzilla as a forum, but the true is that happens, specially  in high controversial bugs.

votes might reduce some comments, but as this same bug shows, doesnt solve the noise problem.

Comment 10

[Jesse Ruderman]

I'm against removing votes from bugzilla.mozilla.org.  While it's true that votes don't guarantee a bug will be fixed or fixed quickly, they're not useless.  They are useful for *helping* to prioritize development and QA effort, and they're great for searching.  They're even occasionally useful for helping with decisions.

I don't think votes are as confusing as comment 0 makes them out to be.

Comment 11

[Jo Hermans]

I'm also using it very often. I use it to 'tag' messages, to add myself to the list of subscribers, without mailing everyone like adding to the CC-list does. And the 'My Votes' list is also very good to have a overview of all bugs that you're interested in, or that you want to remember to use it in bug-triaging. I know that I can also search for my own name in the CC_list, but this is just ... easier.

Comment 12

[Daniel Mota Leite]

OK, but you two are using the votes for other things... if some people want then, change its name to "flag" or "bookmark", but not "vote"

Vote seems that we are helping the decision and as this isnt true, people feel ignored and powerless, creating a distrusted and aggressiveness against mozilla.org.

Comment 13

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

(In reply to comment #12)
> Vote seems that we are helping the decision and as this isnt true, people feel
> ignored and powerless, creating a distrusted and aggressiveness against
> mozilla.org.

Well, perhaps the issue is that we only have positive votes for a bug.  Just because something has a lot of votes, it doesn't mean that there aren't twice as many people who do not want said feature/bug fixed.

Comment 14

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

comment 13: it doesn't matter at all, since the reason something is not getting fixed is not that there are in fact more 'negative votes' than positive ones. The common reasons include lack of resources (i.e. the time of people who can actually _do_ things) and owner's veto.

The issue is that calling the feature "voting" makes people think we're democracy. We're not.

Comment 15

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

Oh, and re #12, voting may affect the decision, it's just that the voters don't _make_ the decision.

Comment 16

[Daniel Mota Leite]

people in CC and the renamed votes to "flag/bookmark/remember this bug" would do the same thing without the lack of democracy problem.
By renaming, mozilla.org would also need to unlimit the number of "flag/bookmark/remember this bug" that one user have

basically the votes would turn to something between the CC and a saved search

Comment 17

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

Votes are still useful to a lot of people. We're not going to remove them.

Comment 18

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

(In reply to comment #17)
> Votes are still useful to a lot of people. We're not going to remove them.
Per recent news group discussions, should we revisit this (at least for b.m.o)?

Comment 19

[David Bruant]

From bug 308801#33 :
"What I meant to express was simply my surprise which came about from discovering that 7 years later this bug is still unresolved,..."
"...The reason I drew people’s attention to this bug on Twitter is because thus far, it seems it doesn't have enough votes to get the priority needed to get it fixed. Surely that's exactly what the voting system is for, though?"

From bug 78414#446
"Probably one of the best ways to get a bug ignored is to vote for it."

Different times, I'm reopening.
The voting feature generates a LOT of frustration from people who don't know how Mozilla works and coming to bugzilla and voting. From the comments on this bug, it seems that the vote feature is used for query and searching by some (is it still the case 5 years later?), so removing it doesn't seem feasible, but it doesn't seem that the renaming option has been fully explored.


Regarding queries, is the number of CC queryable? It could be considered that if someone adds herself to the CC list, they care about the bug being fixed and tracking progress which could be a good indication of how many people care about the bug. In some way, CC could be the replacement to votes.

Comment 20

[Teemu Mannermaa (:wicked)]

(In reply to Jo Hermans from comment #11)
> I'm also using it very often. I use it to 'tag' messages, to add myself to
> the list of subscribers, without mailing everyone like adding to the CC-list

FWIW, there's now a real tagging feature that's better suited for this instead of "misusing" voting feature. And the tagging is still improving and is in much better shape in v4.2 and trunk.

Also, Voting is an extension so it's quite easy to disable it globally for an installation if that's wanted. (I'm not saying that's what should be done on BMO.) Otherwise each product can still enable/disable Voting for that product, just like comment #2 said.

Comment 21

[:glob ✱]

like a lot of features on bugzilla.mozilla.org, voting is used differently by different groups and users.  i don't think we'll be able to rename it to a more suitable name which will appease everyone.

> Regarding queries, is the number of CC queryable?

no, but it's a sortable column on search results.

Comment 22

[a_geek]

My layman's understanding of "voting" is that it marks an issue that I are more important to me than other issues that I don't vote for. Using voting that way results in more votes (hypothetically) giving higher importance to an issue - as far as features are concerned. I have not explored the question which other meanings voting might or might not have... care to explain?