Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (930 mails)

[Jim Henderson <hendersj@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:38:58 +0200, Cristian Morales Vega wrote:

> > > My read of your reply here is that you're frustrated.  Is that a fair
> > > reading of what you wrote?
> >
> > Probably, IMHO reporting bugs "as a proxy" simply makes no sense
> > because "you" (the proxy) will never be able to answer any follow up
> > questions.
>
> In fact the thing is that I think the same: "it is plain ridiculous that
> you suggest that bugs from "forum users" are treated differently from
> bugs reported by $otherPeople". But since Jim seems to really think that
> could happen I was trying to take the issue seriously. But sure. For
> such a thing to be useful I expect those "proxies" to be able to ask
> users for additional feedback when requested.

I appreciate you trying to take the issue seriously.  As I said, it's a 
cultural difference (not as in "US vs. Germany" culture, but "technical 
vs. non-technical" cultural difference.

> To be 100% sincere. What I expect is that if forum admins really try
> such a thing they will find that no user uses that "proxy service" (some
> will say something, but the proxies will not be able to get enough info
> to open a bug report most of the time). And after two months the people
> that volunteer to be the proxies will get tired and the service
> canceled. That at least would end future discussions about devs using
> the forums.

Please tell me that reading that as "then we can stop worrying about the 
users" is not how you intended to come across.  We shouldn't be looking 
for a way to limit discussion about interaction between users and 
developers; we should be looking for a solution that makes that 
interaction as smooth, painless, and the best use of everyone's time for 
*everyone* as possible.

The idea of using proxies to report bugs isn't unprecedented.  For many 
years (well over a decade in total), I volunteered to do just that thing 
in the various incarnations of the Novell forums.  The structure worked a 
little differently, especially in the early days, because there wasn't a 
public bug reporting tool, but the forum staff escalated issues to 
designated backline engineers, who then could take the information to 
development.

Some developers resisted (and do resist to this day) dealing with issues 
that come in that way.  Others recognise the value of using that kind of 
aggregation, especially since many critical issues first get reported in 
the Novell forums before the calls start coming in.  Users don't want to 
call in and raise an incident on known issues, so they start by asking in 
a forum if anyone else has seen the issue.

I've seen it play out time and time again very successfully; I think this 
model (or an adaptation of it) could be successful here and let those who 
do development concentrate more on development.

Jim

-- 
 Jim Henderson
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