[SciPy-Dev] "Anonymous" bug reporting: useful?

[Frédéric Bastien]

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 5:37 AM, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 10:18 AM, Andreas Hilboll <lists at hilboll.de> wrote:
>> I was wondering if it would be good if users could report bugs without
>> having to sign up for a Github account.  From a technical viewpoint,
>> this should be possible, using a dedicated email account, some
>> server-side scripting, and the Github API.
>>
>> Do you have any feeling for how many bugs do not get reported because a
>> user doesn't want to go through the hassle of creating an account just
>> to report a bug?
>>
>> I have the feeling that it must be as simple as possible to report bugs.
>>  And having to create an account (be it at Github or by signing up for a
>> mailing list) is an obstacle to that.
>>
>> Any thoughts / ideas?
>
> I didn't realize that we had fixed all of the bugs that have already
> been reported and our volunteers are pining away without any work to
> do. ;-)
>
> More seriously, the problem has always been spam. Removing filters to
> lower the barrier for honest bug reports also removes the filters for
> much more spam. There are always tradeoffs, and I think we've settled
> on a reasonable one. If we were getting no bug reports, that would be
> a problem, but we're getting a few every day. That's a healthy amount.

It is the first time I read that having bug report every few days is healthy :)

Fred