QA/Bugzilla/Fields/Status/NEEDINFO/en

Purpose of this Page
This page is about the NEEDINFO state of the Status Field in Bugzilla. It is dedicated to explaining and clarifying the purpose of NEEDINFO as well as describing the steps which QA can/will take in addressing NEEDINFO bugs that never get the requested information.

The Meaning of NEEDINFO
Members of the QA team had a lengthy discussion about the meaning of NEEDINFO. Changes were proposed in order to identify what exactly NEEDINFO means. Up until now NEEDINFO has been a status which exists in perpetuity, where it often times sits indefinitely as the user is no longer following their bug and therefore will never provide the information requested. In general there was agreement that this status should give us an idea of what bugs will realistically ever get attention again, not just be a place holder for any bug that we request information and then just sits indefinitely. So NEEDINFO definition:


 * "NEEDINFO represents a bug that cannot be reproduced and fixed until more information is provided. If a bug has been in this state for more than 180 days, it is considered as dead end, and can be closed."

Setting Bugs to NEEDINFO Status
In order to fulfill this goal of cleaning the NEEDINFO bugs QA will try to do the following:
 * 1) Be very clear about what information is being requested
 * 2) Ask user politely to address the request
 * 3) Let user know the appropriate status to set the bug to after information is requested

When Information Is Provided
The information provider sets the status back to UNCONFIRMED when the questions are answered.

When Information Is Not Provided
See our task:
 * QA/Bugzilla/Gardening

Rationale
In general there were several reasons why this idea was agreed upon:
 * Relatively standard across large projects
 * Gives a more appropriate idea of where bugs stand (ie. are they essentially dead and never moving forward or are they likely to need further work by QA or devs)
 * Encourage users & contributors to be proactive about bug reports
 * General reminder that a bug exists, many times users simply forgot
 * Give NEEDINFO a specific definition that is workable (similar to second point)