From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs project mission (was Re: "If you're still seeing problems, please reopen." [ Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2019 00:41:36 -0500 Message-ID: References: <20191117113054.49837.qmail@mail.muc.de> <87pnhq7mxg.fsf@gnus.org> <87bltaz9g4.fsf@telefonica.net> <834kz25qp9.fsf@gnu.org> <87y2wexsv1.fsf@telefonica.net> <20191118175639.08d02820@jabberwock.cb.piermont.com> <874kz0pa9y.fsf@gnus.org> <87sgmjyn60.fsf@gmx.de> <87imnezyt5.fsf@gmx.de> <481a1f16-d661-0f96-2f45-3d5ec9c1132e@yandex.ru> <749d3c85-ecd0-5d4e-b9fc-6405c2ca2334@yandex.ru> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="258318"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Memnon Anon Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Dec 02 06:42:55 2019 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1ibeU3-00157b-9I for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 02 Dec 2019 06:42:55 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:59174 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1ibeU2-0006gD-2n for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 02 Dec 2019 00:42:54 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:54344) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1ibeSn-0006d8-VO for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 02 Dec 2019 00:41:39 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:58382) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ibeSn-0004xF-JE; Mon, 02 Dec 2019 00:41:37 -0500 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1ibeSm-0004M0-IO; Mon, 02 Dec 2019 00:41:36 -0500 In-Reply-To: (message from Memnon Anon on Fri, 29 Nov 2019 09:17:02 +0000) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:242995 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > FWIW, I was always under the impression that, before you even consider > writing a bug report, it is good manners to check, whether the issue > is already reported, or perhaps solved in the dev branch. I just checked the section Reporting Bugs of the Emacs Manual and was surprised to see that it asks users to look in debbugs. That requires substantial work, and substantial knowledge that users otherwise would not need to have, so it is a substantial discouragement to reporting bugs. It also asks users to look at several mailing lists. That too is a discouragement. If we want to encourage users to report bugs, the obvious way is to delete those recommendations. Let's tell users, "It's better to risk a duplicate bug report than risk leaving a bug unreported." It could make sense to have a separate, following section in which we say, "If you report bugs often and you would like to be super-conscientious about avoiding duplicates, you could check for whether each bug has already been reported by looking at... But it's better to risk a duplicate bug report than risk leaving a bug unreported. I suggest making it a separate section because otherwise people might think, "If I don't do these things, and I don't have time to do them, it is better if I not send anything." -- Dr Richard Stallman Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)