Invent/gitlab, issues and bugzilla

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On donderdag 4 juli 2019 19:02:10 CEST Nate Graham wrote:
> On 7/4/19 10:39 AM, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> > Is it really true that gitlab makes reporting bugs easier for our users? I.e., does it offer easier login, an easier way to add screen shots and screen recordings or crash logs?
> 
> In my experience, yes. Being able to use a single account for everything 
> is a big benefit

But is that also true for users? If someone uses a KDE application and wants to report a bug for the first time, which is easier? Making a bugzilla account, or making a KDE identity account and using that for gitlab?

> . And being able to add multiple images and files inline 
> via drag-and-drop is a huge improvement over Bugzilla IMO. Then again if 
> Bugzilla 6 offers this, that will remove one advantage of GitLab issues.

Yes... So I don't think that is all that urgent. 

> > Is it really true that gitlab makes it easier for our users to make reports of a better quality? Like, better wizards, forms, support for smarter templates, more ways to cross-check a bug report with other bug reports, or cross-check the internal consistency? Is it easier for a user reporting a bug on gitlab to tell us which OS, version of OS, version of the application they are using?
> > 
> > Does gitlab offer convenience features for our users like replying by email? (I know that some people think email is on the way out, but in real life, everyone has email -- and if it were going out -- is there integration with instant messaging?) Does gitlab make it easier to be notified of events related to the issue?
> 
> I'm not sure about these.

Well, those are important questions :-)


> > We all know that gitlab has a rich text editor. This is modern, but how important is that, actually? And how important is it to have a rich text editor in our issue reporting system right now? Are we experience a decline in the number of user reports because more and more people don't want to use bugzilla?
> > 
> 
> Anecdotally, yes. I very commonly hear users on social media write and 
> say things like "I don't file KDE bugs anymore because Bugzilla is 
> ancient and incomprehensible". Though to be fair, they also commonly say 
> that it's because we don't do a good enough job triaging bugs, or that 
> KDE developers are too mean and abrasive when dealing with users, so 
> take it with a grain of salt.


Given that I'm inundated with bug reports for Krita, I'll subscribe to that grain of salt -- I just don't believe that people who haven't got any KDE login anyway, for people who just use an application, experience a crash and then want to report a bug are and then arrive at bugs.kde.org decide to not report the bug because the they cannot login with the KDE identity they don't have yet. I don't believe that my users get confused even if they have a KDE Identity (for the forum, and KDE Identity is the biggest problem we have with the forum, before search, threading, email) -- most people who actually report bugs seem to accept this.

And just imagine being a non-technical user who has to find their to reporting a bug on a KDE project, who starts at https://invent.kde.org/public/ -- there's no help at all!



-- 
https://www.valdyas.org | https://www.krita.org