The primary purpose is not usually a list of known defects and many ‘bugs’ are not actually bugs but feature requests or misunderstandings from users (e.g. RFC disallows the data you want my html parser to allow).
The people who filed them would disagree and many would vehemently argue that their bug is in fact a bug, and is the most important bug and how dare you close it.
IME there are separate mechanisms to track feature work, bug trackers are for... bugs.
> or misunderstandings from users (e.g. RFC disallows the data you want my html parser to allow).
Again, this is a class of bug report that nobody is arguing should stay open.