@ Jammie C: Resolving a bug as a "duplicate" of another bug is standard software engineering practice. If you look at the "resolved" duplicate bugs here, you can see that they have "Resolution" set to "Duplicate", and that they link back to this bug - a bug that's still "Open". All this says is that multiple bugs were opened for the same issue, and somebody behind the scenes is trying to connect the dots between all these bugs and let people know which bug is being used to track the issue going forward. As a developer goes through the process of fixing this bug, it's a lot easier and less messy to update 1 central bug with notes than to find all 50+ duplicate bugs and add comments to all of them as one-offs. Plus when engineers and management see that one bug has a bazillion duplicates, it's a pretty clear signal that lots of people are discovering the issue independently - meaning that higher priority should be given to this bug.
That being said, I can see how these patterns might not be obvious to people who haven't worked in software engineering before. Since this is a public-facing website it might make sense to rethink the UI a bit and make it easier for everyone to understand the intent behind resolving a bug as "duplicate". This probably isn't high priority for anyone, though.
Ceyla
@ Jammie C: Resolving a bug as a "duplicate" of another bug is standard software engineering practice. If you look at the "resolved" duplicate bugs here, you can see that they have "Resolution" set to "Duplicate", and that they link back to this bug - a bug that's still "Open". All this says is that multiple bugs were opened for the same issue, and somebody behind the scenes is trying to connect the dots between all these bugs and let people know which bug is being used to track the issue going forward. As a developer goes through the process of fixing this bug, it's a lot easier and less messy to update 1 central bug with notes than to find all 50+ duplicate bugs and add comments to all of them as one-offs. Plus when engineers and management see that one bug has a bazillion duplicates, it's a pretty clear signal that lots of people are discovering the issue independently - meaning that higher priority should be given to this bug.
That being said, I can see how these patterns might not be obvious to people who haven't worked in software engineering before. Since this is a public-facing website it might make sense to rethink the UI a bit and make it easier for everyone to understand the intent behind resolving a bug as "duplicate". This probably isn't high priority for anyone, though.