Bughunting Season!

[Martin Gräßlin]

On Tuesday 11 March 2014 09:41:35 Jos Poortvliet wrote:
> On Monday 10 March 2014 20:10:48 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> > On Monday, March 10, 2014 18:11:28 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > > On 09.03.2014 14:13, Luca Beltrame wrote:
> > > > In data domenica 09 marzo 2014 14:00:25, Sebastian Kügler ha scritto:
> > > >> We'll also open up for feedback from the community shortly, with the
> > > >> Alpha
> > > >> release that will be tagged on Thursday (and likely be released the
> > > >> Tuesday
> > > >> thereafter, stability permitting).
> > > > 
> > > > Likewise, for those that weren't on IRC when I said it: my plan is to
> > > > create a specific forum for Next testers, so that *before* bugs are
> > > > filed, there's some weeding out of other issues.
> > > > 
> > > >  From you (Plasma + Kwin) I will however need a list or something
> > > >  similar
> > > >
> > > >of>
> > > >
> > > > information that should be provided when having issues (like Kwin
> > > > requiring
> > > > supportingInformation, for example). If it's too early for this, no
> > > > problem: but as the release date comes near I think it will be
> > > > important
> > > > to ensure that we can properly handle users (and in turn, this may
> > > > lead
> > > > to better reports for you developers, or so I hope ;).
> > > 
> > > Great idea!
> > > Maybe this would be a good opportunity to try out a new alpha/beta
> > > testing process?
> > > Instead of asking people to directly open bugs, we might ask them to go
> > > to the forum, see whether a thread about a similar issue already exists
> > > and if not, create one. Then people in the forum could try to collect
> > > further information together with the testers and then our team opens
> > > bugs when they have enough information for a useful report.
> > > I think this may lead to a much better "signal-to-noise ratio" than
> > > people flooding bugzilla directly.
> > > What do you think?
> > 
> > I think that this would increase overhead dramatically. We'd have to ask
> > all the same questions that are nicely encoded in bugzilla's forms for the
> > user, and hunt down more detail information.
> > 
> > This is actually what the UNCONFIRMED -> NEW distinction in bugzilla is
> > for.
> 
> On the other hand, it would be *other people* doing most of the asking while
> it is usually the developers triaging the bugs, right?
> 
> Not saying what's better either way and the forums don't work for everybody
> but perhaps it is worth a shot...

Personally I think that it would be a very valuable addition to get the user 
support out of bugzilla. Out of experience most issues reported in bugzilla 
are user support issues. Those are handled better in forums. Thus I like the 
idea and I have brought up this idea in the past.

Now the question is whether this makes sense for the alpha and there I don't 
think it would help. During the alpha we have more experienced users. In fact 
I'd say we have users who know how to use bugzilla. Also the number of bugs 
will still be higher than the user support issues. Probably we can also assume 
that every user support issue will be a bug in the current state of affairs.

Thus I don't think it's a solution for alpha, but I would love to see this at 
a later state (maybe RC?).

Cheers
Martin
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