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Comment by pgaddict | Hacker News Reader

Well, it was not really meant entirely seriously, of course.

I can't speak for other devs contributing to the project, but I think the mailing list is a great way to do this. Ultimately, what you want is a simple way to track information about reported issues, discuss the details, make it reasonably simple to search for existing issues, and post patches fixing the issue. A mailing list does all of that, without having to deploy (and maintain and curate) a separate system.

Why do you think it's more difficult to report a bug this way, compared to a bug tracker? There's even a "report a bug" link on the project home page, where you can submit a bug report through a simple web form (you need a community account, but every other bug tracker I'm aware of requires that too).

Can you explain why you think a mailing list is less efficient than a bug tracker?

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A good bug tracker makes it easier to track status and priority. The ironic thing about the blog post is that it is certainly possible there is a 14.5 year old bug in Postgres, but how would you know? Who is going to go look at 14.5 year old bug report emails and try to figure out if any of them are still open?

Contra: A 14.5 year old open issue that is genuinely untouched for 14.5 years is most likely irrelevant, either because it was swept up, has become obsolete or is some kind of request that no one cares about (otherwise it would not sit around untouched for 14.5 years).

Typically yes, but that is just it. Without a tracker, how do you know for sure?

One thing a bug tracker solves for me is, I have some time to work on things, what should I work on? (This is a different search problem from, I think I'm having this bug, has anyone else had it?)

With a mailing list, I can work on the most recent problems, and with my memory, I can work on the problems that most stand out in my memory (either because they affect me personally, or the process of solving them has attracted my background attention). Neither of those seem like good ways to prioritize things.

But with a bug tracker, I can look for old problems that have not had attention paid to them, and pay attention to them.

I certainly agree a mailing list is a good approach, and many bug-tracking systems operate essentially around mailing lists: RT adds a tracking number to the subject line, and Debbugs essentially creates one mailing list per bug.

> Why do you think it's more difficult to report a bug this way, compared to a bug tracker?

As an end-user the first thing I want to do before reporting a bug is search and see if it has already been reported or if it is being worked on and when it is expected to be released. If I was told that I had to dig through mailing list I would probably just stop before I even started.

> Can you explain why you think a mailing list is less efficient than a bug tracker?

As a bug reporter, I want a friendly way efficiently search and filter existing bugs based on status, version, subsystem, etc. I also want to be able to subscribe to a specific bug to get updates. Maybe you guys have some way to get all those features from a mailing list, but new users certainly won't have a clue.

As a developer I want to be able to easily tag, filter, assign and triage bugs. Assign priorities and associate them with releases and pull requests. I also want to be able to do high level reporting.

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