I came across a bug:
https://bugs.openwrt.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=1726
It is very strange as it had 8 votes from 7 people who registered and voted the same day. Only 1 vote was from somebody who registered before and that vote was the bug reporter:
I am betting these were fake votes to get the report higher priority. Will there be consequences/punishment for doing this? or should I increase priority of my bug reports using same technique?
Thanks!
[Disclaimer: I'm not an OpenWrt developer]
The votes aren't taken into account by the developers anyways.
Why do you think that the votes are not taken into account by developers?
As a product manager by profession, "votes" of any sort are only an indication of interest. In a professional setting it is often the case that relative importance is assessed, based on the perceived impact of an occurrence and the likelihood and conditions under which the issue arises. The relative priority for resolution takes that into account, as well as the estimated cost of making the change and estimates of customer cost (they have to upgrade, at a minimum, and the change might cause other problems) and benefit. By the time you get to the prioritized list of work, votes are pretty much lost in the noise of the realities of development, test, and support.
Surest way to get a change is to do it yourself and submit it. I pretty much know that although I know "exactly" why firstboot fails on NAND-based devices, https://bugs.openwrt.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=468 isn't going to get fixed until I do it. Why? Low impact (workaround present) on the install base and non-trivial to fix.
As a developer I can confirm that the votes have almost zero impact on the prioritization of bugs.
Easy solution - Votes field in bug system removed from reports and forms. If any developer finds this to be a loss, we can quickly restore it and no loss of data.
Excellent idea. I guess if it is removed, one can avoid bug system getting filled with fake accounts also.
While perhaps the developers do not take it into consideration, when a task has so many votes it appears in "most wanted tasks" section. I would have never seen it if it was not there so I would think it still gives an advantage to the bug report.