Ticket Descriptions should be treated as "original content"

[ilias@…]

I've noticed that ticket descriptions are changed.

Ticket descriptions are "original content", that should not be changed. That's way comments are fore. Only the original author should change his own wording.

If the team decides to not protect "original content", then it should be possible to track the changes, thus anyone can verify who's written what.

see #4297 for an example

(this should be clarified within the relevant project documentation)

[Christian Boos]

Well, TICKET_ADMIN have been able to change/fix ticket description since the beginning. Only recently this was visible to the user (the Last changed by… line). The next logical step was, as you suggested, to be able to actually see those changes, and this is now possible since a few days: see #2945.

[ilias@…]

Replying to cboos:

Well, TICKET_ADMIN have been able to change/fix ticket description since the beginning. Only recently this was visible to the user (the Last changed by… line). The next logical step was, as you suggested, to be able to actually see those changes, and this is now possible since a few days: see #2945.

I see.

But this ticket affects the trac project, and thus t.e.o.! It is not possible to track those changes on t.e.o!

And honestly, I'm a little 'horrified' about all admins beeing able to change the users original content without any visible log-entries. This can very quickly lead to missunderstanding and errors.

You should really define a policy about this (TracTicketTriage)

[Christian Boos]

He, we can even delete comments and whole tickets ;)

So yes, this is kind of censorship, if you want. But we like to keep our Trac clean and informative, that's why we occasionally fix the formatting and the spelling of descriptions and why we often delete spam or stupid comments (less often now, since the SpamFilter catches most of them).

So this will become a non-issue once t.e.o switches to 0.11; in the meantime, you're free to document this on the triage page (and close the ticket afterwards).

[ilias@…]

​http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracTicketTriage?action=diff&version=28

(how do i link to this with wiki formatting?)

[ilias@…]

mgood has removed my addition to the TracTicketTriage completely, with the comment:

"editing descriptions is limited to administrators and we're capable of making that judgement on our own"

​http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracTicketTriage?action=diff&version=29

[ilias@…]

furter information within topic: ​POLICY - Ticket Descriptions should be treated as "original content"

I start to loos my trust into the ticket-system, thus I will most possibly move my activity out here.

[Matthew Good]

Replying to cboos:

So this will become a non-issue once t.e.o switches to 0.11; in the meantime, you're free to document this on the triage page (and close the ticket afterwards).

I missed this comment before. I've re-added the TracTicketTriage#TicketDescription section with a more accurate explanation of the policy regarding our editing of ticket descriptions, which has been limited to fixing formatting errors. I didn't consider this relevant to most users since it's an administrative ability, but I'm willing to document it for the sake of transparency.