Re: Does the bug tracker actually work?

[Karl Eichwalder <keichwa gmx net>]

Martin Baulig <martin@home-of-linux.org> writes:

> The problem is that such reports do not help at all; they even do
> harm.

Not a single report does harm.  Every report shows something which has
to be improved; Telsa explained it very well.  Maybe, the application
was released too early?

> 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.

Closing "invalid" reports doesn't take that long, really :)  If the
report is dubious, just flag it with "WorkForMe" -- than the user has to
decide whether he wants believe in you or whether he wants to provide
more info.  Oops, that's bugzilla slang (which also runs at SuSE, BTW).

And never forget: Free software is also about communication: hacker <->
hacker AND hacker <-> user!

> ====
> Subject: it crashes
> 
> The subject says it all
> ====

Just say:

    I'm not able to reproduce the crash.  Please, provide more info.

I'm sure you're using an editor which is able to do some kind of macro
expansion? ;)

> 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.

The user has to decide whether he wants to do this or not.  Please
respect that the user is also short on time!  But you're right, the user
needs more info on GNOME background -- unfortunately, the new "portal"
www.gnome.org isn't that helpful in this regard (I know it isn't your
fault!).

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