Re: Reporting of Problems

[Stephane Delcroix <stephane delcroix org>]

Hey all,

Yeah, I still prefer bugzilla for bug or 'problems', but I'm only one
voice in the f-spot community.
Let me argument a bit on this... for the past few months, I think I'm
the main bugs closer in f-spot, for bugs reported on bgo
(bugzilla.gnome.org), the ml (mailing list) or the IRC channel. As such,
I spend some (too much) time everyday reading both three channels (plus
from time to time, bugs reported in bnc, launchpad and debian bts, cause
some bugs are not forwarded upstream). 

* Reporting bugs once...
The most annoying thing is answering the same things to the same
question twice on the IRC and the ml, to realize some seconds after that
the same guys also filed an item to bgo. I can deal with the annoyance
(not always with enough diplomacy though) but it's very time consuming,
and my time resources for f-spot are scarce with a full-time job, a new
born at home and an illusion of social life I'd like to keep.

* Bugs on the ml (and irc)
There's no problems about reporting bugs on ml. But when a bug is
reported in the ml, if it's not answered and addressed in a few days (a
few minutes for IRC), it slips out of the RADAR... unanswered, and the
users is left unhappy.
More than that, the ml is not the good medium to discuss non-trivial
bugs (cause it pollutes the list) nor the place for bug we can't solve
immediately. I never look back in the (> 3000) messages in my
f-spot-list folder, but I browse the bug list (~300, including
enhancement requests) on a regular basis just to see if there's some we
could solve with the assets (codebase) we have now.
So, I didn't said it's bad to report bugs on the ml, I'm just saying
that's not the best place to track it until it solved.

* What's the ml/IRC for then ?
Everything else. Posting questions, discussing ideas, ranting on users
(for devs), ranting on devs (for users), discussing already reported
bugs (current pattern on IRC) and patches, getting help on how to get
involved, chatting about the weather and personal life and more...

* About a forum or alternate discussions places (launchpad, ...)
Oh no, not a forum, it's so 90's :). No kidding, I have nothing about
fora or yet another alternate discussion place, but personally, I won't
have time to read yet another source of informations.

* So what ?
So, to answer your three initials questions
> 1 The user is doing something wrong or is expecting something that was
> not intended by the developers.
That's an usability bug, report it ;) Or an enhancement request.

> 2 There is a problem specific to only his/her system (computer).
Blame the application if the platform is faulty. It's a common
pattern ;) Report it, you're probably not alone, and we should deal with
faulty platforms...

> 3 There is a bug in the application
Hey, that's a bug. Report it ;)

regards

s


On Wed, 2007-08-29 at 21:21 +0200, Lorenzo Milesi wrote:
> On 8/29/07, Mark Petersen <petersenmde gmail com> wrote:
> 
> > After searching the internet, I have not found any user "forum" for f-spot
> > other than this list. I have hesitantly posted to this list as it seems that
> > this list is geared more toward the developers than the user.
> 
> There's only one list for F-Spot. BTW there are more users than
> developers here ;)
> 
> > My concern with posting here or on bugzilla is that I will be wasting the
> > developers time with a problem that I have created, when instead they could
> > be working on real application issues or improvements.
> 
> I had the same feeling as you, but Stephane still prefers Bugzilla :-)
> 
> > In conclusion: If there is a user "forum" for f-spot that I don't know about
> > please let me know and I will use it, otherwise I will continue to post here
> > and if someone else has the same issue as I do I will then post to bugzilla.
> 
> AFAIK the only support source for F-Spot is this list, or the IRC channel.
> 
> Ciao
> maxxer
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