[rt-users] tickets cleanup ? generally

[Bruce Campbell]

On Fri, 21 Feb 2003, Robert Grasso wrote:

> However, this request asking to remove true errors (such as spelling
> errors - or spam !) does not look illegitimate : the staff is small (4
> people) and they don't fight against each other or against the company, so
> they won't remove important data just to harm the company or their
> neighbours; can somebody tell me what are the main principles, what
> thoughts, from a general point of vue, lead to decide for such an issue ?

<takes off RT hat, puts on security hat>

The correspondence lodged in a ticketing system does form part of a trail
used to track a request.  Something that you do need to keep in mind when
designing these systems, as with any other change tracking (RCS, CVS,
syslogs, printer dumps), is that they must be as unchangeable (in terms of
changing past items) as you can make it.

Once you have a public ability to change these event records, as you are
requesting, you have effectively made the usefulness of these records, in
a legal sense, null and void.

Now although you may not think that your logs have a legal basis at the
moment, this may change in the future (eg, some customer takes you to
court because, oh, an incorrect order was filled), and if you have that
capability, your legal standing is very much the poorer.

Summary: Its a history tool, and you _never_ change the recorded history.

</hat>

> UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because
>   that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn

-- 
                             Bruce Campbell                            RIPE
                   Systems/Network Engineer                             NCC
                 www.ripe.net - PGP562C8B1B             Operations/Security