Re: [PHP4BETA] Re: PHP 4.0.0Release packaged

Hi Jim,
users and developers participating at this discussion will learn, both. 
But newbies won´t, because they´ve had no chance that sb. told them NOT 
to enter everything as a bug. I would welcome creating sth. like an 
"UNCONFIRMED" state like bugzilla.mozilla.org uses. "Enabled" users can 
post their bug-reports directly as "OPEN" but "UNCONFIRMED" bugs do even 
have to be confirmed before analyzing or doing anything with them. That 
will prevent php core devolopers from getting headache and keep that bug 
database *almost* clear. I´m involved at bugzilla for about a year now 
and there you can confirm or mark bugs as invalid during your lunch, 
just by observing if enough information is provided or (the experienced 
one can decide) if it´s configuration, user and what ever errors.

The last stats i got mailed from bugzilla told me that there are 
thousands of users outside netscape who can confirm and edit bugs. 
Opening the bug system to more users could do the same job for php.

André

 > In the approximately 40 bugs I closed, I fixed exactly two bugs --
 > one by adding a note to the documentation that a function was not
 > added until version 4, and about 5 by fixing the Windows mail()
 > bug (a one-line code fix, and something I looked into based on an
 > offhand comment in an email, not a bug report).
 >
 > The rest were all just bug reports from people who had no regard
 > for the time of people who have to deal with the bug reports --
 > they included little relevant information, were duplicates of
 > existing bugs, or were just plain wrong. Every time I take 5 minutes
 > to look into a bug or two in the bug database, I find I'm able to
 > close most of them because they simply don't contain enough
 > information to even begin to reproduce the bug.
 >
 > Of the remaining 561 bugs open against PHP4, I'm willing to bet that
 > there are less than 25 real issues. And of those, maybe two will
 > possibly show up for more than 5% of PHP users. And I'm probably
 > being generous.
 >
 > > Actually I did something more important.  I went through 100K of 
PHP code
 > > trying to eliminate as much as possible of it to reduce to the 
smallest PHP
 > > sample that would be enough to show the behaviour.  Believe me, 
just this
 > > made me stop what I was doing and hang on with that for a whole 
afternoon.
 >
 > And I do appreciate that. Its better than 95% of the other bug
 > reporters do. I'm sorry your problem got lost in the muck. But we
 > are not going to let the progress of PHP get stuck in that muck
 > just because so few are willing to pitch in and clean it up.
 >
 > Jim