Should we update our bug reporting procedures/process ?

[Tim Flink]

On Fri, 01 Nov 2013 12:03:51 +0200
Alexander Todorov <atodorov at redhat.com> wrote:

> Hi folks,
> recently OpenSource.com published an article of mine explaining why
> users should take the extra step to submit a bug:
> http://opensource.com/business/13/10/user-guide-bugs-open-source-projects
> 
> 
> It is based on real event, which happened to me during Fedora test
> days last month. The comments after the article are very interesting.
> Please take a look at them.
> 
> 
> Re-reading my article and comments today got me thinking if we need
> to change something wrt Bugzilla. It appears that users may be having
> difficulties with it. Any ideas, comments, rants?

I'm not sure what the solution is but it reminds me of a conversation I
had last week with a friend who considers himself to be not very
technical.

We were talking about a game that's currently in alpha, but available
for pre-purchase and accepting bug reports in a forum (pretty much how
steam for linux was when they were still in beta). I made a comment
about how I didn't understand why people would use a web forum for bug
reports because it's difficult to search for duplicates, know what's
been filed against each component among other things.

This led into an interesting discussion about community interaction
from a users' perspective. He said didn't know how to use bug trackers
and while it wasn't stated explicitly, I got the impression that it
would take a lot of motivation to change that. He also asserted that it
was important for people who can answer questions to participate in
forums and systems like ask which users seem to prefer over our usual
mailing lists and IRC (I mentioned that I dislike using stuff like ask
because of its user interface).

I'm hoping that hyperkitty will enable a middle ground that both camps
(the people who prefer mailing lists and the people who prefer web
interfaces) are willing to use so there's less of a divide, but for bug
trackers ... I'm not sure what the exact problem is, much less
any possible solutions. Is it the user interface to systems like
bugzilla, or is it more of an intimidation factor about how devs might
respond to a report?

Anyhow, this is more anecdote than anything but I thought that I would
share because I found it interesting.

Tim
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