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Re: do you care about bug reports?


From: Valentin Villenave
Subject: Re: do you care about bug reports?
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:54:32 +0100

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 1:41 AM, Graham Percival
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Hmm, ok.  I remember adding a few items over the summer that
> appeared to have gotten lost, but as long as you have all the
> email archives, I guess that works out.

Yes, I noticed your concerns :)

> Please do, if only so that we can see if there's anything that
> /did/ slip through the cracks.

Will do.

> When I was Bug Meister, I used to occasionally send a message to
> the bug list saying "I got a bit behind in the past few weeks, but
> now I've caught up on everything.  If you submitted a bug and it's
> not in the google issue tracker, please send it again".  Something
> like that might be good here.

Makes sense.

> It feels like more because you let it pile up.  *as soon as* a bug
> report comes in, look at it.  If it takes you more than 60 seconds
> to understand it, reply to the submitter to that effect.  Once
> you've bounced the bug report back -- asking for clarification, a
> minimal example, whatever -- then it's no longer your problem.  If
> the user doesn't reply, then forget about it, and move on to the
> next issue.

Au contraire, it *is* my problem because most of the time it's me not
being intelligent. Take Frédéric's latest "too many accidentals"
report: perhaps I'm getting stupid (or very very very tired), but even
after reading the whole discussion twice I'm having a hard time making
heads or tails out of this.

> If you understand it (60 seconds), test it on the lastest devel
> release (30 seconds), then upload it to the tracker (60 seconds).

Yeah, the "understanding" part is my weakness :)

> I want to emphasize this point.  **if you cannot easily understand
> the bug, it's the submitter's fault, not yours**   we simply do
> not have the resources to hunt through unclear bug reports.

Not always: Frédéric's initial report seemed crystal clear, but
getting to the bottom of this seems awfully complex when it's 2AM :-)

> I read an article somewhere about a "hot potato" way of handling
> bug reports.  I don't know if you play this game in France, but
> the idea is that once you catch something (the "hot potato",
> although in children's games it's not *actually* a painfully hot
> piece of food), you need to throw it to the next person as quickly
> as possible.

Yeah, we have that -- though the "patate chaude" paradigm is often
used here in a political context (for instance when the government
tries to get rid of healthcare policies or whatever ;)

> I haven't said that we don't have a bugmeister; I mistakenly
> claimed that we had lost bug reports.  I retract that claim, but
> we still *appear* to have lost some bug reports.  I think that
> more people working on this task would be a good thing.

Agreed.

> But it would be nice if we had _some_ kind of response, so
> submitters have a bit more confidence in the system.  I don't care
> if they think we're meanies who are really picky about accepting
> reports, just as long as they have confidence in our mean-ness.

Only brilliant people like you can afford to be mean; these days I
just feel plain stupid and incompetent... :)

Cheers,
Valentin




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