Launchpad Bug Filing Changes for Ubuntu + reporter's thoughts

[David Tombs]

Hi André,

Unfortunately, I don't think your report is very clear. It would be 
helpful to triagers to edit the bug report to include information listed 
in 
<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Writing%20a%20useful%20report>, 
especially steps to reproduce the problem.

If you want to be really helpful in finding the source of the problem, 
try getting a crash backtrace as described on 
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash>.

Thanks,
David

André Pirard wrote:
> On 2009-09-15 19:53,  Brian Murray wrote :
>> Hello everybody,
>>
>> As a part of the Increase Apport Adoption specification[1] we are going
>> to kick off an experiment and redirect all of Ubuntu's /+filebug links
>> in Launchpad to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs. This
>> change has been tested on staging.launchpad.net already and will be
>> landing shortly on edge.launchpad.net(*).
>>
>> If you review the specification and the documentation bug reporters will
>> be redirected to, you will notice that we spent a lot of time and energy
>> on ensuring that we improve the quality of bugs when they are reported.
>> The time many of us spend on triaging very incomplete bugs is not
>> sustainable given the volume of bug reports. Having reporters use
>> ubuntu-bug (apport more specifically) to report bugs will reduce many of
>> these problems for us.
>> ...
> Hello,
>
> Before trying to improve the quality of bug reports, I would wonder 
> what happens to bugs that are perfectly reported already.
>
> Among many, an example of a developer's dream of a report is : Bug 
> #233990 
> <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/233990>.
> Instead of simply forwarding it to development, instead of these 
> possibly asking the reporter for one more detail and/or test, and 
> instead of its being a thing done, I was asked "What is a bare 
> linefeed?", "Where is it?" (in the message file I uploaded), "What 
> happens if you erase your config?" and "What happens if you pull your 
> socks off before sending?".
> Every answer is in the message file.
> After 1.5 year, the report is said to be incomplete, marked for 
> expiration 47 days ago, the bug is still well alive, and, of course, 
> the reporter is frustrated and less a reporter.
>
> Even more so because many sites implement OpenID server but not 
> client, a plain user cannot conceivably subscribe to tens of upstream 
> sites and learn their specifics each time.  Ubuntu's specialized 
> people should cope with those administrative details, each in their 
> specialized field, so that Launchpad be the single interface through 
> which the user can dialog with the developer (or the other way round 
> if you prefer :-))
> Automatic peering(1) of messages between local and upstream case would 
> do wonders.
> When that's not feasible, and if OpenID client were implemented in 
> Launchpad, it would be easier for a developer to subscribe to 
> Launchpad than for Ubuntu users to go there.
> Because any Ubuntu user meeting a problem can use Launchpad as a means 
> of direct workaround and promise(2), it's better to have the problems 
> documented in Launchpad than to have fed-up-with-it reporters go to 
> other places directly.
>
> It's a silent thanks how many times hunting for any Linux information 
> lands on the word Ubuntu.  What you all are doing is amazing and it's 
> my pleasure to [try to] be helpful.
>
> Thanks for your attention too.
>
> André.
>
> Text optimized for 17 to 190 characters wide display.
>
> (1) Never trust spelling checkers, I've had to add a "r" :-)
> (2) Many times my answer to "there are more bugs than in Window" was 
> "maybe, but look how fast you find the solution".  Once, Microsoft had 
> changed their so-called MSN server's behavior 3 days before to pest 
> the world and some Ubuntu had found hours later than an alternative 
> plugin for Pidgin was cocking a snook.
>