2010/6/25 Jim Henderson <hendersj@gmail.com>:
Sure, and that's why the discussion of how to interrelate between these two groups is so important. Some say "use bugzilla", and sure, that's one option. But for the users, bugzilla isn't always the most convenient way to report problems. Many users don't know what details to provide in order to get the bug addressed. I have a very strong technical background and I often will not open a bug until I am able to identify with specificity what *exactly* the problem is - and if I don't know what exactly is broken, I want to find out before opening an issue. Which means having an informal chat with someone who *does* know what I should be looking for to make the bug report *useful*.
Users will ***NEED*** to provide the details to get the bug addressed. Whatever it is in bugzilla, in the forums or in twitter. Without the details the bug can't be identified and so fixed. It's a kind of law of nature, nothing specific to bugzilla. But... https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=527657 The user starts with a description far enough of the real problem that doesn't helps at all. I ask for the console output (the only thing really needed a lot of times) and then the problem is shown and fixed. User don't have to know about the console output, but it's something easy to learn... the next bug report will be better. If you give a description that shows the exact problem great. If you give a patch to fix the problem even better. If everything you know is that app X crashes when opening a kind of file... well, it's a start, open the bug report and we will say you how to obtain the missing info. Nobody is biting people that gives suboptimal bug reports.
I work in my day job alongside a large number of non-technical people who are expected to raise issues in bugzilla; they find it cumbersome and confusing, because bugzilla is a tool developed by developers *for* developers, not for the average end user.
You (and I for that matter) may look at it and say "what's so confusing about it?", but our perspective on what's easy and what isn't is different than someone with no technical background. It's very difficult to put oneself in another's shoes and have that "aha, now I see what's confusing about it" moment.
OK, the bugzilla interface. As you explained we don't see the problem, so we can't fix it. Since "our perspective on what's easy and what isn't is different than someone with no technical background" we can't help here... if these users "find it cumbersome and confusing" they just need to say what the problems are and how could them be improved. Since they can't use bugzilla to report the problems with bugzilla itself lets see the forum this time: - All the forums have just 17 threads with "bugzilla" in its title in all its history, 5 from archives. - Some are people trying to INSTALL bugzilla - One is a success history - Some are related to temporal problems with bugzilla - The russian subforum has a sticky explaining how to report bugs. Now I like Russian forum users! ...there are not a lot of people asking for help about how to report a bug. From here it seems they don't even TRY or that when they try they have no problems at all. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org