Re: Does the bug tracker actually work?

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Sun, Aug 06, 2000 at 03:30:48PM +0200 or thereabouts, Martin Baulig wrote:
> > Filtering out the "it crashed" reports [snip of one of my longer and
> > embarrassingly bad sentences] will not change the fact that the apps did
> > indeed "just crash".
> 
> The problem is that such reports do not help at all; they even do harm. It
> means that someone needs to read them, find out that there's no useful
> information at all in them and then close them. This time could be used to
> fix real bugs.

OK, I can see that point. I hadn't realised it would take so long to 
skim and mark as closed, though. That does sound a pain.

> > GNOME is so very integrated that it took me ages to work out what
> > was what. Bugs in gnome-terminal are a great example.
> 
> That's no problem at all and I was not even complaining about this.  For
> instance, most LibGTop bugs I get were originally reported as GTop ones
> and I just reassign them to LibGTop.  That's something which the average
> user just can't know.

Nod. I think I sent most of my libgtop ones to gtop :)

> > I don't think it's fair to describe all these reports as "crap";
> > and I am trying hard not to take the "stupid user" comment personally. 
> 
> Don't take this personal, with "stupid users" I meant people who are really
> stupid and especially some of them which make me really angry.
> 
[snip] 
> and the next day I get the same bug report from the same person again and
> one day later I get the same bug report from the same person even a third
> time, that's what I call a "stupid user".

Okay, yes. I hadn't realised you were getting that one, either. (Making
notes here about "Do's and don't's" for bug-buddy doc additions..) 

> I'm also a bit complaining about people who "just report a bug" without
> even caring about whether they're helping with it or not.

I know some of them are born of frustration (there was a truly obnoxious
one in Helix's tracker a while back. "This sucks. You all suck.") but I
think the majority of people want to help. Really :)
 
> For instance, if we could tell people who're reporting bugs to have a look
> at the bug database first and try to find out whether their bug has already
> been reported, then this'd already be a big success.

I suggested this and a host of other things a year ago, I think :) Ahh, 
here we are. Some of this lot already exist, and I have better ideas
for some of the others, but:
http://mail.gnome.org/pipermail/gnome-list/1999-August/031420.html

Telsa (adding "how to query for bugs" onto the "must write" list, too..)