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Suggestion for the R Bugs web page

7 messages · Martin Maechler, Peter Dalgaard, Marc Schwartz

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Hi all,

I would like to recommend that the following text from the R Posting
Guide be placed on the R Bug submission page in the section "Submit New
Reports", which would read as follows:

Submit New Reports

You can submit new bug reports either using an online form by clicking
on the button below or by sending email to r-bugs at biostat.ku.dk. 

Before you post a real bug report, make sure you read R Bugs in the
R-faq. If you're not completely and utterly sure something is a bug,
post a question to r-help, not a bug report to r-bugs - every bug report
requires manual action by one of the R-core members.

If you wish to comment upon an existing report, you cannot do that via
the web interface. Instead send an email to the above address with the
Subject: header containing (PR#999) -- replace 999 with actual report
number, of course.



Perhaps reading that brief middle section, without having to click to
another page, will help to reduce user error reports going to R Bugs and
save members of R Core some time.



Also, as a quick pointer, I noted that there is a repeated word ("for")
on the R Home Page in the "Getting Started" box:

R is a free software environment _for for_ statistical computing and
graphics. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms,
Windows and MacOS. To download R, please choose your preferred CRAN
mirror.


Best regards,

Marc Schwartz
#
Thank you, Marc, for your suggestion.
Marc> Hi all,
    Marc> I would like to recommend that the following text from the R Posting
    Marc> Guide be placed on the R Bug submission page in the section "Submit New
    Marc> Reports", which would read as follows:

    Marc> Submit New Reports

    Marc> You can submit new bug reports either using an online form by clicking
    Marc> on the button below or by sending email to r-bugs at biostat.ku.dk. 

actually, nobody should advertize that e-mail (but maybe those
at ku.dk, when they talk about it inside DK), 
but rather  r-bugs at r-project.org .

The advantage of the latter is its "genericity" and the fact
that mails are filtered a bit more.

    Marc> Before you post a real bug report, make sure you read R Bugs in the
    Marc> R-faq. If you're not completely and utterly sure something is a bug,
    Marc> post a question to r-help, not a bug report to r-bugs - every bug report
    Marc> requires manual action by one of the R-core members.

    Marc> If you wish to comment upon an existing report, you cannot do that via
    Marc> the web interface. Instead send an email to the above address with the
    Marc> Subject: header containing (PR#999) -- replace 999 with actual report
    Marc> number, of course.

------------

    Marc> Perhaps reading that brief middle section, without having to click to
    Marc> another page, will help to reduce user error reports going to R Bugs and
    Marc> save members of R Core some time.

Note that we (well, primarily Peter Dalgaard) have considered
complete changes to the R-bugs "system" anyway some of which
would obliterate the e-mail interface completely IIRC.


    Marc> Also, as a quick pointer, I noted that there is a repeated word ("for")
    Marc> on the R Home Page in the "Getting Started" box:

    > R is a free software environment _for for_ statistical computing and
    > graphics. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms,
    > Windows and MacOS. To download R, please choose your preferred CRAN
    > mirror.

I've fixed that one --- haven't checked for how many months this
has remained unreported....

Thank you, Marc!
Martin

    Marc> Best regards,

    Marc> Marc Schwartz
#
On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 18:51 +0200, Martin Maechler wrote:
My pleasure Martin.
That e-mail above (biostat.ku.dk) is the one presently on the R Bugs
page (both the text and the mailto: link).
Bugzilla?  ;-)

JitterBug of course is no longer actively maintained by the Samba folks.
You are welcome Martin. I don't often go to the main page, as I have
specific pages bookmarked in Firefox. It just happened to catch my eye.

Marc
#
Marc Schwartz <MSchwartz at mn.rr.com> writes:
X-actly. No need for the smiley. Apart from the maintenance issue, we
also have the problem of spam injection, aggravated by the fact that
Jitterbug is chopping headers off incoming mail, so that it looks like
it comes from us. We did get blackholed at one point - the entire
pubhealth department...

It would be a no-brainer to switch to Bugzilla, were it not for the
3000 or so messages that are already sitting in the Jitterbug
database.
#
On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 21:15 +0200, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
Ouch. That's not good.

Perhaps that's one of many reasons that the Samba folks themselves have
switched to Bugzilla?
Might the python script linked at the follow Bugzilla report be of use?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124869

See the attachment in Comment #1:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=69233

as the author's web site link appears to be offline. I don't know
python, so I would defer to others with more expertise as to whether the
above is useful "as is", or might serve as a starting point.

Marc
#
Marc Schwartz <MSchwartz at mn.rr.com> writes:
Fortunately, we got pulled out of the hole relatively fast, because
Duncan Murdoch knew the mechanisms. And fortunately, not every
recipient uses those blackhole lists.
Andrew Tridgell will have known about the lack of maintenance for a
while... The idea of putting a public mailing list into the loop
wasn't part of the original design. The code to prevent duplicates
from messages sent to both r-bugs and r-devel was a local hack.
Yes, I got the bright idea of googling for "jitterbug bugzilla" just
after replying as well... It does look quite useful. Not that I speak
Python either (Monty excepted), but the scheme he has been converting
from - status encoded in the directory name - is quite similar to our
slightly simpler Foo/Foo-fixed convention.
#
On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 22:06 +0200, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
Well, hopefully that might work with only modest alteration then,
enabling a less painful transition. Pending further review of course...

Marc

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