Re: Bug form and attachments...

On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 12:27 PM, Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net>
wrote:

> On Sat, May 14, 2016 at 4:00 AM, David G. Johnston <
> david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
>> So, bug #14137 was just filed and due to the lack of ability to attach
>> files via the bug form the body of said message is inordinately long.
>>
>> Emails sent directly to the lists can have attachments so its not like we
>> are prohibiting them as a general rule - though maybe the behavior is
>> different on -bugs...
>>
>> Without testing I presume that the user filling in the bug report is
>> emailed the message that they send - or at least it could be made to work
>> that way.
>>
>
> The form gets sent to pgsql-bugs. If the user is subscribed to the list
> they get a copy, if they're not they don't (and have to review it in the
> archives).
>
>
​That seems unnecessarily limited behavior since -bugs subscribers see the
email as coming from the person and a reply-all goes to them (or at least
their purported email address) as well.

>
>> In lieu of (or in addition) to adding a file upload capability it would
>> be nice to limit the general initial message size and inform the user that
>> should they need to amend their posting, to include files or additional
>> details, they can do so as a reply to their original message.
>>
>> I haven't given it too much thought but a couple recent incidents of
>> super-verbose message bodies provoked me to at least voice my thoughts.
>>
>
>
> Limiting the length could certainly be done, and trivially so (we do
> actually limit the length of the subject, just not the body). Any
> suggestions for a reasonable actual limit? :)
>
>
​I'd probably make it a soft limit initially - that once exceeded causes a
message to appear on the form that describes alternate/preferred means of
sending lots of data to the list.

As for a good value maybe someone will be kind and compute the 99th
percentile of ​initial body message lengths and pick something in that
ballpark - the general issue is somewhat rare...probably enough so to just
live with the status quo.

Adding file upload capacity would be a lot more work. I think we need a
> "better overall solution" for dealing with them before investing in that.
>
>
​Agreed.

David J.​