Bugzilla: is there a walk-thru somewhere? - Page 7 - maemo.org

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	Andre Klapper	2009-11-22 , 19:12
	Posts: 1,665 \| Thanked: 1,649 times \| Joined on Jun 2008 @ Praha, Czech Republic	#61

Originally Posted by silvermountain

I don't know...I kinda liked it. It really highlights the attitude of the bug-team/bugzilla-team that I've seen so many times from Andre Klapper, ZeroJay and now GeneralAntilles. It's just good to have it more out in the open.

Please don't imply that opinions of individuals here are the one and only opinion of the entire Bugsquad.
Because that's wrong.

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	Andre Klapper	2009-11-22 , 19:14
	Posts: 1,665 \| Thanked: 1,649 times \| Joined on Jun 2008 @ Praha, Czech Republic	#62

Originally Posted by luca

It's helpful to avoid somebody wasting his time.
Edit: maemo's bugzilla is the only bugzilla where I feel I wasted my time.

Looking at the past I can totally understand that.
Looking at the present I disagree, but of course humans don't simply throw away their (bad) experience of the past.
So no offense taken here.

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	silvermountain	2009-11-22 , 19:16
	Posts: 1,359 \| Thanked: 717 times \| Joined on May 2009 @ ...standing right behind you...	#63

Originally Posted by Andre Klapper

Please don't imply that opinions of individuals here are the one and only opinion of the entire Bugsquad.
Because that's wrong.

You'rfe absolutely right. My bad. I'll limit it to the people mentioned.

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sjgadsby	2009-11-22 , 19:23
Posts: 5,335 \| Thanked: 8,187 times \| Joined on Mar 2007 @ Pennsylvania, USA	#64

Originally Posted by krisse

They were giving very valuable data on how maemo could be made more reliable and easier to use, but no one is collecting that data.

From the sound of it, you were.

I've submitted bugs and feature requests on behalf of others before. I've also helped people through the process of submitting a bug. I'm happy to do either again.

We've already people, including Andre, who watch Talk, the mailing lists, and elsewhere for items that look like new bugs (and items that look like existing bugs), and then help the reporter appropriately. Perhaps we just need to formalize that group and process a bit further so it's not so far below the radar.

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	GeneralAntilles	2009-11-22 , 22:18
	Posts: 5,478 \| Thanked: 5,222 times \| Joined on Jan 2006 @ St. Petersburg, FL	#65

Let me try this again. Apparently, I didn't do a good job of getting my point across the first time, and, as it's actually a very reasonable one, you know there's been a communications issue when people start pulling out John Swift. So, a few points:

Bugzilla is a tool to submit bugs and limited enhancement requests about most official Maemo-related websites (maemo.org, maemo.nokia.com, etc.), many community-developed applications, and the software and applications in the Maemo platform. On the scale of all feedback Nokia factors into its product design it is extremely small (to take one example, Nokia's internal tracker is pushing 125,000 bugs while we've just passed 6250). By extrapolating what you have from my 95% quote you are vastly overestimating the influence bugzilla has on the total feedback Nokia gathers about its product design (this is unfortunate and has led to a lot of frustration for me, but I'll address this point later).

When you see me say that I don't want 95% of users reporting bugs you assume I mean that I don't care about the opinions of those users, but this is not the case! Bugzilla is not a tool that can nor ever will adequately serve those users' needs, and trying to bring them into it only serves to frustrate the users and the existing bugzilla participants. Developers and users do not get along well. They do not speak the same language, they do not value the same things and putting them together isn't always a productive endeavor. This is why, in most projects, the developers don't do UX design.

Originally Posted by krisse

The problem is that these guidelines are sometimes being applied blindly to the extent that they break common sense.

I agree entirely, but that's somewhat outside the scope of this particular discussion. It should be noted, though, that internal developers probably have a harder time fixing the UI specification than even we do.

Originally Posted by krisse

The people drawing up the guidelines aren't the ones handling the bugs, so there's apparently no feedback shaping those guidelines.

This, of course, is definitely not the case. As I said before, the public bugzilla makes up only a very small portion of the total feedback that Nokia elicits. They use focus groups, they listen to Nokia Care (in aggregate), they send out surveys, and they hire contractors to do even more of this for them. Nokia is generally not a stupid company, and assuming that the maemo.org bugzilla is their only source of input is silly.

Originally Posted by krisse

If the guidelines cause problems then the guidelines have bugs in them.

Yes, in my opinion, they frequently do, but, again, outside the scope of this topic and something that's been rehashed a thousand and one times. It's not something we can fix from the outside so there's little point in wasting too much energy on it.

Originally Posted by krisse

They DO effing report bugs! Most of the messages I got on tablet school were bug reports of one kind or another.

. . . and you were doing exactly the right thing by forwarding them to bugzilla. This is how it should work, perhaps people interested in doing this should formalize themselves, though.

Originally Posted by krisse

They discussed error messages, problems with apps, and confusion over how to do things.

Only the first two actually qualify as bugs, the third really belongs in Brainstorm.

Originally Posted by krisse

They were giving very valuable data on how maemo could be made more reliable and easier to use, but no one is collecting that data.

Again, this is most certainly not the case.

Originally Posted by krisse

You cannot, simply cannot, make a product for ordinary users unless you listen to ordinary users. It simply won't work.

And you think the only place Nokia gets feedback from end users is through bugzilla? Or that I have any control over that?

Originally Posted by krisse

If you have a product shaped entirely by feedback from hobbyists, you'll end up with a product that only hobbyists want to use.

We have a product where hobbyist input is a very small portion of the input being incorporated. This is quite obvious with the increasing hobbyist discontent with many of Nokia's design decisions (both hardware and software) with each new generation.

So, to summarize:

My earlier points were referring only to bugzilla.
Bugzilla is a tool for developers and enthusiasts, it does not serve users well and never will.
Bugzilla is far from the only input source Nokia users (in fact, it's a ridiculously small one on the scale we're talking about).
End users are quite adequately represented (actually, I'm quite sure several people here would argue over-represented) through the masses of feedback Nokia receives through dozens of other channels.

If you have questions about any of my points here, kindly address them to me directly, thanks.

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	Andre Klapper	2009-11-22 , 22:39
	Posts: 1,665 \| Thanked: 1,649 times \| Joined on Jun 2008 @ Praha, Czech Republic	#66

Originally Posted by silvermountain

Best quote, by GeneralAntilles: "We don't want 95% of users to report bugs. Most of them are woefully under-qualified to do so"

That's quite out of context for a signature and can be easily misunderstood without reading the clarifications in GeneralAntilles latest comment.

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	zerojay	2009-11-22 , 22:46
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Originally Posted by silvermountain

I don't know...I kinda liked it. It really highlights the attitude of the bug-team/bugzilla-team that I've seen so many times from Andre Klapper, ZeroJay and now GeneralAntilles. It's just good to have it more out in the open.

And what attitude is that? That we want some quality in the bug reports coming in? That we want our developers to actually get usable information that will be helpful in fixing your bugs? That Bugzilla isn't the actual problem here?

The fact of the matter is that if you want bugs fixed, you have to go about it in as detailed a manner as possible, otherwise you just end up with developers closing bugs as "Could not reproduce", users remaining frustrated that the bugs are still there...

If you don't understand what priority or severity means, that's okay. Just fill in the information that you DO have and people like myself and Andre will fix up the bug so that it has all the info needed... or we'll ask you for more details.

The most important parts of a bug report is:

a) Version of your software/firmware
b) What your expected results are
c) What your actual results are
d) The steps to follow to reproduce the issue on your tablet.

For a good example of how to file a bug, take a look at mine here: https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6003

If you aren't sure how to do or say something, feel free to talk to one of us for help either through PMs here, IRC, IM... wherever we are and we'll be more than willing to help you.

Bug reporting is one of those things that's a little scary at first, but just do it a few times and you get the hang of things. Yes, while Bugzilla isn't the most user-friendly way to do things, it's by far the best way of doing things from a tester and developer point of view. And if you want to report bugs but don't want to deal with it yourselves, just send one of us an e-mail or IM or whatever detailing your problem, we'll ask a few more questions to make sure all the info needed is there and that's it.

I don't know if anyone's written a walk-through for reporting a bug, but I think I still have the one I wrote for work that I can repurpose for Maemo complete with images and explanations without technical jargon, written for first-time Bugzilla users. Will that help you guys out at all or are you both beyond trying to use it at this point?

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	Andre Klapper	2009-11-22 , 22:52
	Posts: 1,665 \| Thanked: 1,649 times \| Joined on Jun 2008 @ Praha, Czech Republic	#68

Originally Posted by zerojay

I don't know if anyone's written a walk-through for reporting a bug, but I think I still have the one I wrote for work that I can repurpose for Maemo complete with images and explanations without technical jargon, written for first-time Bugzilla users. Will that help you guys out at all or are you both beyond trying to use it at this point?

That sounds very interesting.
So far only https://bugs.maemo.org/page.cgi?id=bug-writing.html exists which is the Bugzilla upstream default with some changes to be less vague and more Maemo specific.

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	silvermountain	2009-11-23 , 00:15
	Posts: 1,359 \| Thanked: 717 times \| Joined on May 2009 @ ...standing right behind you...	#69

Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles

When you see me say that I don't want 95% of users reporting bugs you assume I mean that I don't care about the opinions of those users, but this is not the case! Bugzilla is not a tool that can nor ever will adequately serve those users' needs, and trying to bring them into it only serves to frustrate the users and the existing bugzilla participants. Developers and users do not get along well. They do not speak the same language, they do not value the same things and putting them together isn't always a productive endeavor. This is why, in most projects, the developers don't do UX design.

Not sure how the above relates to your point about "We don't want 95% of users to report bugs. Most of them are woefully under-qualified to do so" as being 'woefully under-qualified' is quite a bit different than saying that Bugzilla is not targeted at end-users.

Also, you ask for that further points to be addressed directly to you. Maybe you should have also applied that yourself when publicly, in this thread, telling another forum member to stop trolling. On a post that I honestly can't see how it's close to that.

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	GeneralAntilles	2009-11-23 , 00:26
	Posts: 5,478 \| Thanked: 5,222 times \| Joined on Jan 2006 @ St. Petersburg, FL	#70

Originally Posted by silvermountain

Not sure how the above relates to your point about "We don't want 95% of users to report bugs. Most of them are woefully under-qualified to do so" as being 'woefully under-qualified' is quite a bit different than saying that Bugzilla is not targeted at end-users.

See the point in my summary in the previous post about my points being related to bugzilla. Again, the communication issue. I should've said in bugzilla, but since I assumed that's what we were talking about, I didn't think of it at the time.

No, could you please try to maintain civility and remove that extremely out-of-context and self-serving quote from your signature? Thanks.

Originally Posted by silvermountain

Also, you ask for that further points to be addressed directly to you. Maybe you should have also applied that yourself when publicly, in this thread, telling another forum member to stop trolling. On a post that I honestly can't see how it's close to that.

You're going to have to be a bit more clear here.