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 Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org