More unhelpful update descriptions

[Adam Williamson]

On 2013-06-28 17:44, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
> There still seems to be an issue with the update descriptions that we
> present in PackageKit. A lot of people just write "update to version
> x.y.z" which is not great, but a whole lot better than some of the ones
> we've been seeing recently. For example, from two updates I got today:
> 
> * "Not tested locally yet, I need to spin back up a Fedora 18 VM."
> * "Here is where you give an explanation of your update."
> 
> Now the first one is obviously a one-off mistake, but had the update
> been checked over just once it would have been caught. The placeholder
> one is a big recurring problem, though: it seems to show up at least
> every week or so, which is not OK.
> 
> And once, about two months ago -- I really should have complained then
> and not now -- an update was pushed where the text displayed in
> PackageKit was something along the lines of "why do I have to describe
> my update here when I've already filled out the RPM changelog." I wish
> it was a joke, but something like that was actually pushed as the
> description of a F18 update presented to every user who glances over 
> the
> updates....
> 
> We need written policy on update descriptions, since despite the last
> discussion on this list [1], poor update descriptions continue to
> blemish the otherwise-professional image of the distro. A starting 
> point
> suggestion: "Every update should have at least a one sentence
> description." If the update is not worth writing one sentence about, it
> is not worth pushing out.

I've suggested before that Bodhi should reject any update with an empty 
description or with the placeholder text as the description. That would 
be really helpful.

Frankly I would suggest filing negative karma on the "why do I have 
to..." description you mentioned. I agree that it's simply not 
acceptable.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net