On Sun, 29 May 2005, Ross Smith wrote:
On Sunday, 29 May 2005 03:17, Uros Bizjak wrote:
There is no problem that Bugzilla is un-intuitive, it is far from
that. The users don't fill bugreports because they are afraid of
filling an invalid report or a duplicate.
I strongly suspect you're mistaken about the reason.
Well, the site is pretty stern about searching first :-) Which is
fair enough for the usual internet-culture (RTFM, STFW) reasons.
Is perhaps some kind of anonymous account needed (as in Slashdot's
case) to encourage these users to fill bugreports?
I think this is probably the real showstopper. [...]
Whenever I see something like "we need a valid email address" on a
corporate web site, I always take it for granted that it's because they
want to spam me. [...]
I don't think this is entirely the problem, however. That recaction
is reasonable nowadays, but I think there are textual improvements
that could help.
It's an oft-quoted idea in teaching that you tell people what you
are going to tell them, then you tell them it, then you tell them
what you have told them. I think the bugzilla site could be
improved by explaining the process a bit more:
* How will your email address be used?
* Who will actually see it? Does it get shrouded, at all?
* Will the system send you alerts of changes?
* Do you have any control over the kinds of alerts you get?
* Is there a person/group/list you can talk to about our
bugzilla culture if the information here is insufficient?
Then there might be information such as
* What will affect the time it takes to fix your bug?
* Is there a normal lifecycle for bug reports, so you know how
far your bug has progessed?
* Any terminology you should be aware of (such as PR)?
If this information is available I think it could be made more
obvious, so that you pass through/close by it when reaching the page
where you make the account.
There has been an assertion that GCC is for developers, and the
sites reflect this. Well, I'd like to challange that. Many
packages (and I think among them are, or were, Exim, Python, Perl
and Ruby) are designed to work best when built with GCC, and if you
have problems you are often advised to try with (the latest?) GCC. Given
that many OS vendors don't supply a compiler now, it maybe that many
people experiencing problems are not familiar with GCC develpment,
and may not consider themselves familiar with modern C. They may be
finding bugs (or only perceived bugs) when using GCC to get
somewhere else. Obviously friendliness for developers is important,
but I don't helieve it covers everyone.
So, to conclude, I don't think there is much wrong with Bugzilla,
but that it could benefit from managing people's expectations of it,
by supplying such information up front.
Hope this helps
Hugh
