Launchpad itself

Bug listings containing duplicates don't distinguish them or link to originals

Bug #295224 reported by EmmaJane
116
This bug affects 7 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Triaged
Low
Unassigned

Bug Description

When a bug listing includes duplicate bug reports (in an advanced search, or in the listings that will appear by default when bug 5977 is fixed), the duplicate reports are not indicated any differently from non-duplicate ones, and there is no link to the report they're a duplicate of.

For example, <https://launchpad.net/~emmajane/+reportedbugs?field.omit_dupes.used=> contains several duplicates, but you can't tell which of them are, or go to the originals, without examining each in turn.

At least six mutually exclusive solutions have been proposed:
Bug 3796 suggests displaying duplicates as "Duplicate".
Bug 28868, bug 38344, and bug 299283 suggest keeping their status in sync with the master report.
Bug 55730 asks for either of the above.
Bug 3785 and bug 66488 suggest marking them as "Rejected" (now "Invalid").
Bug 46113 suggests displaying them as "closed".
And bug 492011 suggests marking them as "Fix Released".

See original description
Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

Please excuse the irony, but this is a duplicate. :-)

Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

Alternatively, we could reopen this bug report to cover just the idea of showing, in search results that do show duplicates, which report each of them is a duplicate of.

Revision history for this message
EmmaJane (emmajane) wrote :

What actually shows up in the search results page for reporting new bugs? I read them all and this was definitely not listed. :(

As long as the problem of finding reported bugs is resolved, that will be good. I think it would be handy to have a shortcut to the "main" bug (i.e. "yes" to reopen). But only if there is a way to present the results in a way that makes sense. Just because you can show data, doesn't mean you should.... For example: If the solution to the main bug (of which this one is a duplicate) is to have a new filter that shows only "duplicate bugs" it would, of course, make sense to have a column with the "main" bug.

Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

Ok, revising ...

(Why didn't bug 5977 come up? Because when you report a bug, the list of possible duplicates shows only bugs reported under the same project. This makes sense for most projects, but Launchpad (ab)uses multiple "projects" to cover the single Launchpad codebase -- for example, bugs about the Launchpad bug tracker go under not "launchpad", but "malone". (Yes, really.) Therefore, they don't appear when you report bugs under "launchpad".)

Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
EmmaJane (emmajane) wrote :

I like the revised version, thanks!!!

This is me refraining from submitting a bug report about "malone" vs. "launchpad" bug searching and reporting. Totally. Resisting. :) In the mean time my apologies to those who have to triage my duplicates!

Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)
description: updated
Curtis Hovey (sinzui)
Changed in malone:
status: New → Triaged
importance: Undecided → Low
tags: added: feature ui
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)
description: updated
Robert Collins (lifeless)
tags: added: duplicate-handling
William Grant (wgrant)
tags: added: bug-search
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