Re: [Gaim-cabal] pidgin.im jabber server questions

[Luke S. <lsc...@us...>]

On Sun, Oct 29, 2006 at 11:45:44PM -0500, Mark Doliner wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 22:34:38 -0400, Daniel Atallah wrote
> > In talking to Luke, he came up with the very reasonable requirement
> > that users must be registered in order to file bugs and other tickets.
> 
> I'm probably in the minority, and I'll probably be overruled, but I don't like
> requiring users to register in order to file bugs, patches, leave comments, or
> modify the wiki.  I think it discourages people from contributing, and creates
> a less-friendly culture.  I think the barrier to entry should be as low as
> possible.
> 
> I know Adium had problems with spam on their trac.  My best suggestion for
> counteracting that is to place a .htpasswd restriction over our entire trac
> with a username/password of "gaimtrac/gaimtrac" or something, and put the
> username in the auth message that prompts for the username and password.
> 
> -Mark

I remember the problems *we* had with the SF trackers before
requiring an account.  We did not have problems with spam, but we did
have problems with utterly useless reports.

To this day, we rarely have a bug report we do not have to ask a
question in.  If we allow anonymous reports, then we have no way to get
answers to those questions unless the anonymous user just happens to
come back and check the status of his/her report at some later date.
experience says this will not happen very often.

Requiring registration with an email address gives us the ability to ask
questions and, as importantly, have the user know we asked a question.
This is, I sincerely believe, critical.

Keeping the bar low is certainly valuable.  That's why I am intrigued by
the possibility of converting email to bug reports.  That should offer
an interesting combination of being able to control spam, being able to
get additional information, and keeping the bar low.  We can filter the
incoming mail to that address for spam before allowing it to post for
example, or require that a responce email not bounce.  I'm not sure how
possible this is with trac though.

luke