Bug 258519 – Hints for advanced bug search are displayed at the wrong point in the process

• Product: Gentoo Infrastructure
• Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE

[Description Markus Wernig 2009-02-10 23:23:11 UTC]

Hi all

Well, this is probably more a question of taste, but to my shame I must say that it accounts for at least 10 duplicate bug reports I have entered (even after 10 years of OSS):

When going to bugs.gentoo.org, the first textbox entry allows you to search for existing bugs, and gives a good hint that prefixing "ALL" to your search will include closed etc. bugs. I then enter my search term (eg. "totem" because I had trouble compiling it) and get the resulting page of all _open_ totem related bugs. So far, so well. At the bottom of the results page there is another search bar that allows me to repeat, refine etc. my search. But it does no longer contain the useful hints about closed bugs.

I am sure that this leads to quite a lot of duplicate bug reports. Because:
Any (more or less desparate) user hitting the front page will - with rare exceptions - just enter their keywords in the search field in the assumption that it will be possible to refine the search later on. Most of them (I did) will completely ignore the advisory text about closed etc. bugs.
When none of the bugs returned by the first search fits the picture, most users will assume that there are no such bugs - simply because they are not aware of the fact that closed bugs have not been displayed. If the hint about prefixing "ALL" appeared on the search result page as well, I am convinced that less duplicate bugs would be reported, simply because users will read more carefully after a failed search than before. The way it is now, I am informed of the existence of closed bugs _before_ that information is relevant, and at the point where it would be relevant, the information is no longer present.

I would suggest that the advisory text about prefixing the search string should be displayed on both - the entry and the search result - pages.

Alternatively, the default search could automatically contain closed bugs - but I am aware that this would cause a performance issue on most servers.

kind regards
/markus

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Got to bugs.gentoo.org
2. Search for keywords
3. No match found
4. Open new bug (even if a hundred matching ones have already been closed)

[Comment 1 Markus Wernig 2009-02-10 23:36:07 UTC]

The text on the search results page could read along the lines of:
"Didn't find a bug for your problem? Try prefixing "ALL" to your search keywords in order to include closed and duplicae bug reports."

[Comment 2 Alex Legler (RETIRED) 2013-09-10 07:58:17 UTC]

The ALL keyword is only applicable to quick search. Any refined searches use the regular search interface which gives you a way to select the statuses you want to see.
We currently don't display any hint regarding 'ALL' at all.