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Any visitor or user who clicks the Bugs tab, situated on the Top Questions Page, is presented with *single page of bugs ranked in order of votes. These upvotes might lead an inexperienced user (and they're still around) to believe these bugs are listed in order of importance e.g. “Top” = “highest (priority)”. Instead, they are listed according to popularity.

  • The first reported bug, with 127 upvotes, is Deletion votes from users who later become moderators shouldn't prevent community undeletion. I contend that it was never a bug to begin with. Users cannot vote to undelete a post that was deleted by five users if one of them was later elected as a mod. This appears to be by design but if it's not, why is it still listed as a bug after 5 years and 10 months? Call it an oversight, a forgivable lapse, a side-issue, but I don't think that can be classified as a software error.

  • The second bug–85 upvotes–reported in 2016 is Why is my profile image different? It is my understanding, very limited, I know, that this bug has since been fixed. In any case, SE issued avatars (Gravatars) that change overnight no longer happens. That bug has been resolved, hasn't it? Of what use is it to the community today? Shouldn't it have a moderator's tag or something, saying "fixed" or status completed?

  • The third reported bug is dated 2012: If users with <20 rep can't chat, why does SO nag me to move comment threads to chat? However, it was soon closed as a duplicate of a feature request: Disable chat migration notification if one of the users has insufficient rep?. That FR earned a tag in 2018. Again, who could possibly be interested in this "bug" today when, first of all, it was really a criticism of the chat design/functionality and not a bug. And secondly, it's closed, which means no new answers can be posted

  • The fourth top-rated bug, with 71 upvotes, is: The editor should be able to convert multi-line blocks to lists But is it a bug, in the real sense of the word? It appears to be another Feature Request. The answer posted suggests a viable solution of listing items but doesn't SE also allow users to make lists by using numbers followed by a period? For example,

    1. Item one
    2. Item two
    3. Item three (and so on)

UPDATE
Spurred by comments and Laurel's answer, I flagged the aforementioned post February 13, suggesting that it was not a bug. The flag was rejected with this boilerplate message

declined - flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention

So, MSE is left with a "bug" that was reported 5 years and 11 months ago. I'm not sure how to interpret the response to my flag or the evident lack of activity or response this "bug" has produced.

  • Bug #5 was closed for being off-topic by Adam Lear ♦ in January this year, but it's still on the list. Which begs the question, why are off-topic posts allowed to clutter the Bugs page?

  • Bug #6 (64 upvotes) Is my SO Coffee Mug defective?

Although it has the tag, it doesn't exclude it from appearing on the main page. We can agree that it was a fun post while it lasted, however, it is not a bug. A Stack Overflow coffee mug that does not automatically refill itself, is a problem for its owner not for the community. I dunno, maybe it belongs on the meme list?

In order to view the most recent bugs, a user must click on the sandwich menu, top left corner, then click on Questions which takes them to the All Questions page and then...(pause) there's no tab for bugs! How come? Why is there one on the Top Questions page but not on the All Questions?

The solution is to click the tag and then click Newest. This seems a rather counter-intuitive and tiresome process for a newcomer who will probably end up reporting a duplicate bug.

Why is there a bug tab on one page but not on the other? Why does that bug page have only one page, there is no page 2, 3, 4 etc?

What purpose does that page have: curiosity to find out which bug in MSE history collected the most upvotes? It's only until you reach the bottom that SE tells its visitors, Looking for more bugs? Browse the complete list.

enter image description here

Wouldn't it be better if there was a message at the top of the page? For example,

If you are looking for a complete list of bugs, click here

Wouldn't a handy list of unresolved bugs, ranked highest in priority, help prevent newcomers from posting duplicate bugs and encourage all users to upvote the reported bugs they care most about?

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  • 2
    "But there is no bug." uh? I just read the question and its answers, imho, that is clearly a bug.
    – Federico
    Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 11:37
  • @Federico It's by design though, isn't it? Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 11:38
  • 3
    well, it did not get the "status-by-design" tag, so I would not be sure.
    – Federico
    Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 11:39
  • 4
    If something isn't a bug, the moderators (or SE staff in case of MSE) should retag and remove the tag. Simple as that. So any question tagged as bug is a bug report until retagged. Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 11:52
  • @ShadowWizard so what does that page do exactly? Is it supposed to provide a list of bugs which haven't been fixed? I haven't looked at each and every post, so I'm not saying there are no bugs listed, but it's disputable if the top four questions are still or were ever bugs in the first place. Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 11:56
  • Exactly. It's list of the top 50 bugs without action tag on them (completed, rejected, etc), sorted by votes. Nothing more, nothing less. Shortcut for this search, if you like it better. :) Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 12:00
  • If you think a question tagged bug is not a bug, flag it for mod attention and explain why, if retagged by moderators other users probably won't roll it back. Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 12:01
  • @ShadowWizard Are you suggesting that I have to go through each question separately evaluating whether the flaw is by design or has already been resolved (duplicate) or was never really a bug to begin with, in order to have a reliable list of bugs which have not been handled yet? No, thanks. Too much work for one user alone. Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 12:04
  • 5
    Umm.... why would you do this? That's the job of SE developers who should fix the bugs. But yes, in order to really see and evaluate each and every bug, one must read each and every bug report, and sometimes they're not really great and need editing, or as you say not really bugs. But it's not our job to decide or handle it, in general. Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 12:06
  • @AndreSilva I took it for granted that users know that only mods or CMs can classify whether a bug has been resolved or not. I didn't mean to suggest that users can arbitrarily use the red tags themselves. If you look at the relevant link (3rd question), it was tagged by a mod. Commented Feb 13, 2019 at 8:31

1 Answer 1

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Wouldn't a handy list of unresolved bugs, ranked highest in priority, help prevent newcomers from posting duplicate bugs and encourage all users to upvote the reported bugs they care most about?

This is already mostly how it works (assuming that people upvote because a bug is high priority and not for the lulz). Bugs that are tagged , , , or are removed from the tab, since there are higher voted bugs that aren't on the bugs tab:

Having only one page is expected because it is a page under "Home" not "Questions" (see for example the Active page under "Home" and compare it to the one under questions.) On these pages, the link to more questions is always at the bottom of the list.

Addressing the specific questions:

  • The first question you mention seems to be a bug, especially since the answers, one by a SE employee and another by a (now) former SE employee, say they don't think it should be this way.
  • The second question (which I posted) is still unresolved. Although people's images have stopped changing and being inconsistent, the Gravatar option still shows the new, wrong Gravatar for me (which is why I'm using an Imgur image of the old, good pic).
  • The third question does not have have a tag. It is closed as a duplicate of a post with that tag. I think it would be a good idea to exclude closed questions from the tab though. In the meantime, a moderator could add a tag to the duplicate.
  • The fourth question seems like a bug for the sole reason that I can't imagine anyone designing it that way on purpose, but I could also see it being an oversight. I'm on the fence on whether it should be tagged , but I think it ultimately doesn't matter. Nevertheless, if you see a mistagged question, you can retag it.

Lastly, because this tab (and the feature request tab) don't exist on other sites, I think that everyone here should know how to find only questions with a specific tag. Honestly, these tabs don't seem like much use to me, especially considering what Custom Question Lists can do (and what they will be able to do). The fact that there are 13-16 different lists of questions between all the different menus (depending on what site you're on; see here for more info), some with very opaque behavior, is confusing though.

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