When I originally proposed the "status explanation" field I thought it would be a way of presenting information that was relevent only to one particular project affected by the bug, without spamming people who weren't interested in that project. But this could never work, because there are no bugtask-specific lists of subscribers, so everyone gets mailed regardless (see bug 3529).
The term "status explanation" is now hidden, except in the activity log, where it causes confusion because it makes some bug comments show up and others not (see bug 88531). Since it doesn't and will never serve any useful purpose, the database field should be abolished.
When I originally proposed the "status explanation" field I thought it would be a way of presenting information that was relevent only to one particular project affected by the bug, without spamming people who weren't interested in that project. But this could never work, because there are no bugtask-specific lists of subscribers, so everyone gets mailed regardless (see bug 3529).
The term "status explanation" is now hidden, except in the activity log, where it causes confusion because it makes some bug comments show up and others not (see bug 88531). Since it doesn't and will never serve any useful purpose, the database field should be abolished.