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krisse's Avatar
Posts: 1,540 | Thanked: 1,045 times | Joined on Feb 2007
#31
Originally Posted by Andre Klapper View Post
Sure I want nontechnical users to report **bugs**. I don't want them to file their configuration issues though that belong to a forum or a mailing list, so I don't want Bugzilla to be as easy as a forum where everybody can post without spending a few seconds to think. You might think that this is arrogant but it is actually useful in order to have a useful signal to noise ratio.
The problem with that is it assumes technically-minded users are picking up all the signals and they are not.

The bugs I've championed on Bugzilla have been things that technical experts wouldn't consider bugs, such as the flash-shutdown, the fit-with-to-view etc. I was reporting them because I got so much feedback from ordinary users on Tablet School. If I hadn't been listening to ordinary users they wouldn't have been reported at all.

If there was a proper Nokia support forum for ordinary users to talk about it that would be great, but there isn't. There is a discussion forum on the Nokia website but there's never any official response to support problems. And trying to get a reply from Nokia's direct support numbers is highly inefficient because they will have to deal with each person one at a time.

It would make a lot more sense to have ordinary users report their bugs to a central list, and if they see the bug already listed then they could vote for it instead of repeating it. And that's what sites like Brainstorm do.
 
krisse's Avatar
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#32
If there's a common configuration mistake which everyone makes, then that too is a bug, it's a design bug and should be treated just like any other bug.
 

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#33
Originally Posted by krisse View Post
If there's a common configuration mistake which everyone makes, then that too is a bug, it's a design bug and should be treated just like any other bug.
I totally agree.
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JosefA's Avatar
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#34
Originally Posted by Andre Klapper View Post
I don't want another system that is used for "bringing the initial reports into a valuable state before copying them to Bugzilla".
I prefer this to be done in Bugzilla itself.
That is sensible. I agree.

Originally Posted by Andre Klapper View Post
As said already: It's not about filing the perfect bug report in Bugzilla. If people are afraid of doing something wrong when filing a report in Bugzilla I wonder how to change this. Maybe by a "If you are unsure just pick up something"?
Hm. It strikes me as very likely that by the time a non-technical user has found out there's a bug tracker that they can submit issues to, they've already talked to a developer or more technical community member about the bug. So in the best case they have someone to walk them through their first submission and in the worst case if Bugzilla gives them permanent psychological trauma the person they were speaking to can file it. So, non-issue.
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#35
krisse, thanks a lot for the list.
It's appreciated.

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
Long list of ways that Bugzilla is user-unfriendly:

-This page does not properly explain where people are meant to report a problem with their device: https://bugs.maemo.org/enter_bug.cgi Which ordinary user knows what a repo is? Who is going to know who "Maemo Devices" are? Who is going to know which apps are managed by them? For a specific example, which category would a browser bug be reported in?
I expect users to be able to know that the Browser was an application that was by default available on the system.
In case of being unsure you can click "All" and choose "Browser" from the list.
Repository: Good point. I wonder how to change the wording or elaborate (like "if you have enabled this in the Application Manager" maybe?)...

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
-How is someone supposed to know the severity of a problem?
By clicking on "Severity", or by not touching it if being unsure.

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
-How is someone supposed to know the priority of a problem?

-How is someone supposed to know what terms like "QA Contact", "Assign To", "Alias" mean? I know these don't have to be filled in, but these all add to the scariness of the site, as if it isn't really intended for consumers' eyes.
This will all be hidden after upgrading to Bugzilla 3.4.

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
-Which OS are people supposed to report, the OS on their computer or the OS on their device? And what if they use several OSes on their computers? And why do they have to even give the OS of their computer if the problem is on their device?
Device - either a Nokia device, or the OS on their computer in case of reporting an SDK bug. Any idea how to make this clearer?

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
-What does "component" mean?
I wonder which wording would be less techy. "Part"? :-P

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
-What does "version" mean? Assuming it means the OS version on their device, how on earth are ordinary users supposed to know what version number they have?
That's explained in the Template, and default is set to "unspecified". Again this boils down to the issue that it might be unclear that reporters do not have to fill in everything.

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
-What are they supposed to put in the URL box? And does everyone actually know what URL means?
This will be hidden in Bugzilla 3.4.

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
-Why does the bug report button say "commit", as if it's some kind of nuclear weapon launch system?
GNOME Bugzilla had a patch that changed the button name to "Save Changes" and I think it makes sense.

Originally Posted by krisse View Post
-Why does the bug report window include scary cryptic strings of characters like "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)"? (I know what this all means, but an ordinary user would be baffled by it.)
Yes, we should get rid of that.

Good points.
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#36
Me and my big mouth opened a can of worms on a Saturday night!

But it seems like we do have some consensus on a few things that might help to make it clearer.

Having apparently talked myself into it, I shall head off to bugzilla and file a bug on... bugzilla. At which point I fear it may take offense and eat me. I'll link back to this thread so all the suggestions in here get included.

Thank you to everyone for taking this seriously. I find Bugzilla scary. Especial thanks to Krisse and Andre for all the work.

Edit: there's I've done it and I survived. I'm not sure how useful it was as a bug-file, but as an experience for a new-user, it was very useful. (Especially knowing that Andre will be looking out for it)
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Last edited by RevdKathy; 2009-11-21 at 20:56.
 

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#37
Originally Posted by silvermountain View Post
What I find missing from that s/sheet is a 'Due Date'-column, that's pretty standard in any project management efforts - how else do you track if you are on-track or not and/or set some expecations for 'customers'?
What's the due date for the SSO task, in your opinion? What happens if it's not met?

The inaccuracies and unusefulness of most "due date" columns are why the sprint process contains start date, progress and MoSCoW prioritisation.
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#38
Moving away from Bugzilla to anything else means getting nothing but a bunch of vague bugs from people going "it doesn't work - FIX IT".

That's why Bugzilla asks for all the info that it does... because while the user may not understand the relevance of all the info, you never know when the developer might pick out a bit of info that makes things so much clearer to him.

If there's anything you don't understand, just leave it alone and someone else such as Andre will come along and fix things or ask additional questions to fill in the blanks.

Bugzilla just looks intimidating until you understand a little bit more about how bugs are fixed and documented. I know it's somewhat intimidating at first, but once you've entered a bug or two and you get a feel for it, you'll see it's not anywhere near as bad as you've been saying.
 

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#39
Originally Posted by zerojay View Post
Moving away from Bugzilla to anything else means getting nothing but a bunch of vague bugs from people going "it doesn't work - FIX IT".
You really think that Bugzilla is the only possible way to do this?

There are many viable alternatives to Bugzilla. There are lots of ways of making bug reporting easier without allowing vague reports.

Wizards for example can give people multiple choices that narrow down bugs one step at a time without requiring any technical knowledge, and without allowing totally freeform reporting. Many operating systems use such a technique in their help files.


That's why Bugzilla asks for all the info that it does... because while the user may not understand the relevance of all the info, you never know when the developer might pick out a bit of info that makes things so much clearer to him.
Makes it so much clearer to the developer, and so much unclearer to the user. The whole design philosophy of Bugzilla is developer-oriented.


If there's anything you don't understand, just leave it alone and someone else such as Andre will come along and fix things or ask additional questions to fill in the blanks.
There is absolutely nothing on Bugzilla to let people know what they can leave blank and what they have to fill in.


Bugzilla just looks intimidating until you understand a little bit more about how bugs are fixed and documented. I know it's somewhat intimidating at first, but once you've entered a bug or two and you get a feel for it, you'll see it's not anywhere near as bad as you've been saying.
Most ordinary users will not even enter one bug with Bugzilla in its current state. They will assume this system is not intended for consumer use, and in many ways they will be right.

If someone is treating Maemo as an interesting hobby that they want to learn more about, yes, that's true that people can learn to use Bugzilla.

But 95% of people who use gadgets aren't treating it as a hobby, they just want the damn thing to work.

If you want to make it possible for this 95% to report bugs, Bugzilla is not up to the task.
 
krisse's Avatar
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#40
Originally Posted by Andre Klapper View Post
Device - either a Nokia device, or the OS on their computer in case of reporting an SDK bug. Any idea how to make this clearer?
Why are we even considering steering consumers to a bug reporting system which includes provisions for SDK users?

Ordinary users should not be going anywhere near anything to do with SDKs.

This is yet another argument in favour of keeping Bugzilla dedicated entirely to developers, and making a totally separate and totally different bug reporting system for consumers.

Like I've said before, consumers want to be in a restaurant while developers want to be in a kitchen. They're two different worlds even though there's a relationship between them.

Last edited by krisse; 2009-11-22 at 04:08.
 
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