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Microsoft is closing all old bug reports they couldn't fix

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Microsoft is closing all old bug reports they couldn't fix

#11

Post by ianderf »

winteriscoming wrote: post #6

Having been part of projects that grew large over time and are composed of too many components, I understand why this is done. It reaches a point where you can't go to each open issue and see whether it's still relevant in the context of all the new and different technical changes that would have gone in during that period. That mail does seem to point to a place where users can report this afresh if it's still relev…

No, it's a totally wrong apporach. It's your work that you are paid for, and nobody is ought to make your work for free.

Re: Microsoft is closing all old bug reports they couldn't fix

#12

Post by ianderf »

winteriscoming wrote: post #10
ianderf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> time required to setup, reproduce, investigate, fix and test against that and other versions And that's not the case again. I already provided all information to reproduce that bug easily. PS "bugs", actually. They've closed several bugs that I reported, though notified me about one only.

I am not denying that many bugs that got closed might still be relevant and reproducible. What I meant in my comment was that this doesn't look like a bad or some kind of "we don't acknowledge or care about these issues" move. Rather this appears to be an attempt at getting the bug reports into a more relevant and manageable state.

> getting the bug reports into a more relevant and manageable state

What means that somebody got them into the unmanageable state, in the first place.

Re: Microsoft is closing all old bug reports they couldn't fix

#13

Post by blitzd »

jacquesm wrote: post #5
douche wrote: post #2

At some point, simply keeping track of these things is more overhead than it is worth. I don't work anywhere near the scale of Microsoft, but at some point, you just have to say, alright, we're not fixing this; it works completely different in version N+1 that you should have upgraded to years ago, and btw, we're actually on N+3 now, so we are not going to fix old, janky code that we already fixed.

It's bad. It conditions people to simply not bother reporting bug. For every reported bug there are thousands of users who already don't bother to report anything. Bug reports are free, very valuable input and if you have a bug reporting process you really should fix them.

I already gave up on filing bug reports for MS products years ago for this exact reason.

This is not a case of it's fixed in x, or you should upgrade to y, it is neglect plain and simple.

I asked about this exact issue when they did an AMA in the SQL Server subreddit a while back, and I shit you not the response was that 'for a few years the team didn't have a lot of resources'... That's right, MS doesn't have the resources to properly support and develop SQL Server and the surrounding development tools.

They were also encouraging everyone to vote on the connect items, as they were using vote count as the priority indicator for addressing issues. No intake triage, just get enough votes and maybe then they'll think about fixing some bugs.

I simply don't use their tools any more where I can avoid it, and where I can't I'm looking for longer term replacement plans.

Re: Microsoft is closing all old bug reports they couldn't fix

#14

Post by blitzd »

winteriscoming wrote: post #6

Having been part of projects that grew large over time and are composed of too many components, I understand why this is done. It reaches a point where you can't go to each open issue and see whether it's still relevant in the context of all the new and different technical changes that would have gone in during that period. That mail does seem to point to a place where users can report this afresh if it's still relev…

They do this for bugs that are easily reproducible on all versions of these products as well.

I received a similar response to a bug report a few years back, it had been open for a couple of years without even being acknowledged, then one day they decided to close it with a form letter listing possible reasons. People continued to upvote it, and finally 3 1/2 years after it was filed it finally got fixed. No interaction from anyone at MS other than the form response, and the final status change. I've filed about a dozen bugs reports on connect - and this is one of the few 'success' stories, sadly.

User engagement at MS is very broken.

Re: Microsoft is closing all old bug reports they couldn't fix

#15

Post by Piskvorrr »

winteriscoming wrote: post #6

Having been part of projects that grew large over time and are composed of too many components, I understand why this is done. It reaches a point where you can't go to each open issue and see whether it's still relevant in the context of all the new and different technical changes that would have gone in during that period. That mail does seem to point to a place where users can report this afresh if it's still relev…

That's quite possibly what they're saying. On the other hand, this is what I hear: "We don't care about bugs, ignored them anyway, and now we'll pretend there aren't any. If you want to go through this cycle again, and see the bugs ignored again, file them again. We dare you!"

In other words, bugtracker bankruptcy is never nice, and the risk of discouraging users from filing bugs is significant.

Re: Microsoft is closing all old bug reports they couldn't fix

#18

Post by breakingcups »

ianderf wrote: post #3
douche wrote: post #2

At some point, simply keeping track of these things is more overhead than it is worth. I don't work anywhere near the scale of Microsoft, but at some point, you just have to say, alright, we're not fixing this; it works completely different in version N+1 that you should have upgraded to years ago, and btw, we're actually on N+3 now, so we are not going to fix old, janky code that we already fixed.

> it works completely different in version N+1 that you should have upgraded to years ago, and btw, we're actually on N+3 now, so we are not going to fix old That's not the case. The bugreport that they closed is still actual in the latest version.

Refile it if you still care about the issue. I know it doesn't seem fair, but it's the only way to operate at this scale.
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