
Microsoft is closing all old bug reports they couldn't fix - ianderf
That&#x27;s a letter I received today:<p>This notification was generated for feedback item: &lt;...&gt; which you submitted at the Microsoft Connect (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;connect.microsoft.com) site.<p>Thank you for taking the time to report this problem.  This problem was reported two years ago.  In an effort to focus our resources on the most impactful problems, we are closing old Connect issues.  If this problem is still important to you, please go to https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.visualstudio.com and follow the instructions there to file a new report.
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dorfuss
It reminds me of an old joke from the Windows95 era:

How many Microsoft engineers you need to change a light bulb? None. Microsoft
simply announces darkness the new standard.

* - (please don't take it seriously)

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Jyaif
Apple does this after every iOS release. Obviously I'm not filing "Radars"
(Apple's name for a bug report) anymore.

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douche
At some point, simply keeping track of these things is more overhead than it
is worth. I don't work anywhere near the scale of Microsoft, but at some
point, you just have to say, alright, we're not fixing this; it works
completely different in version N+1 that you should have upgraded to years
ago, and btw, we're actually on N+3 now, so we are not going to fix old, janky
code that we already fixed.

~~~
dariusgodre
The bigger issue is that they let it get this bad. In order to get this this
point, they would have had to systematically fail triage bugs when they come
it, fail to track them as they're fixed, and fail to rectify the problem for
over two years.

This is an admission that they probably never gave a damn about your bug
reports. But hey: if you'd like to help this multibillion dollar company to
triage their bugs and re-file an updated issue they would appreciate it.

~~~
winteriscoming
>> The bigger issue is that they let it get this bad. In order to get this
this point, they would have had to systematically fail triage bugs when they
come it, fail to track them as they're fixed, and fail to rectify the problem
for over two years.

In reality, it's not that easy. There have been times where, in projects that
I have been involved, I wanted to fix a certain issue but the time required to
setup, reproduce, investigate, fix and test against that and other versions,
just adds up to a point where you cannot focus on the other equally important
(new development) tasks at hand. So overtime, issues which might look easy to
fix or interesting, do get piled up.

~~~
ianderf
> time required to setup, reproduce, investigate, fix and test against that
> and other versions

And that's not the case again. I already provided all information to reproduce
that bug easily.

PS "bugs", actually. They've closed several bugs that I reported, though
notified me about one only.

~~~
winteriscoming
I am not denying that many bugs that got closed might still be relevant and
reproducible. What I meant in my comment was that this doesn't look like a bad
or some kind of "we don't acknowledge or care about these issues" move. Rather
this appears to be an attempt at getting the bug reports into a more relevant
and manageable state.

~~~
ianderf
> getting the bug reports into a more relevant and manageable state

What means that _somebody_ got them into the unmanageable state, in the first
place.

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winteriscoming
Having been part of projects that grew large over time and are composed of too
many components, I understand why this is done. It reaches a point where you
can't go to each open issue and see whether it's still relevant in the context
of all the new and different technical changes that would have gone in during
that period.

That mail does seem to point to a place where users can report this afresh if
it's still relevant. So, not a bad approach, to get these bug reports to
hopefully in a more relevant and manageable state.

~~~
blitzd
They do this for bugs that are easily reproducible on all versions of these
products as well.

I received a similar response to a bug report a few years back, it had been
open for a couple of years without even being acknowledged, then one day they
decided to close it with a form letter listing possible reasons. People
continued to upvote it, and finally 3 1/2 years after it was filed it finally
got fixed. No interaction from anyone at MS other than the form response, and
the final status change. I've filed about a dozen bugs reports on connect -
and this is one of the few 'success' stories, sadly.

User engagement at MS is very broken.

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CyberFonic
Some manager received a bonus for closing so many bug reports. Wonder if he
took the team out for pizza and beers.

~~~
Zelmor
Downsized them, rather. Save money on wages too!

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Zelmor
This fits into the picture with the development culture that was hinted on in
these irc chats:

[https://i.imgur.com/y6clspP.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/y6clspP.jpg)

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GFischer
Many other large companies do that.

Google did that with Android several times, and another poster mentions Apple
does that too.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8803118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8803118)

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anonbanker
it's interesting to see that Microsoft is actively adopting Jamie Zawinski's
CATD model[0].

0\. [https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html](https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html)

