Re: Reporting of Problems

[Larry Ewing <lewing novell com>]

On Thu, 2007-08-30 at 10:07 +0200, Stephane Delcroix wrote:
> 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
> 

me too!!11!! 1

Really there is no wrong way to report a problem there are just methods
that will make things easier for the maintainers and as a result make it
more likely that your problem will get attention. Bugs are especially
useful because they track status in a way that is really impossible to
do on a list or forum.  

If you would also like to open your problem for broader discussion here
then feel free to bring it up but include a link to the bug so that
people reading the archives can find the resolution and Stephane's head
doesn't explode.

--Larry

PS> Stephane is being modest, he is definitely the main bug closer.