On Thu, 21 May 2009, john.mcl...@sybase.com wrote: >> > A good description of how to produce the problem, but unless you develop > the fix, an analysis of exactly what is happening is very likely to be > completely wrong.
We had this problem in the project I'm working on, where we would get help desk requests that basically said "it's not working," with very little supporting info. It doesn't matter if this is an e-mail or a bugzilla ticket, it's not very useful. The way we are dealing with it is there is an on-line form where people can submit requests or trouble reports, and it guides them through the process of describing the problem, what they were doing at the time, what error output they got, and any workaround they found. See a sample at http://pirates.spy-hill.net/HelpDeskRequest.php (By comparison, bugzilla and Trac have one entry field to describe the problem, and people who have never written at ticket before do a bad job of it.) The report is both sent to a short mailing list of a few of our developers and posted to a help desk forum. If the problem deserves a ticket in our bugzilla, then someone on that list (which I guess serves as Paul's small screening committee) then submits the ticket. The form has collected all the info they need to write the ticket, but they can adjust as appropriate. That results in better tickets. Most of the requsts are actually for information or for troublshooting our hardware, so we don't get many tickets this way. Which is the point, since most of the problems don't need one. The form also allows for anonymous postings, but if you are not logged in to the site you have to solve a reCAPTCHA. We ask for an e-mail address, but it's obscured in the forum posting (but not the version sent to our short list.) I'm not suggesting that this form be used for BOINC (though it's available if desired). The main points are that most users who report a problem are not very good at writing a trouble ticket. That should not be a surprise, since you should not expect them to, esp. given the way Trac and bugzilla solicit the info. Guiding them a bit can result in better problem reports, and someone who screens these can then write the ticket, and do a good job of it. I've seen many postings in the dev forums where a volunteer from a project has taken the time to post a note about something they think is broken or could be improved, and the response is to tell them "go post a ticket". That's not a helpful response. Ask them questions, figure out what they are really saying, and then someone more knowledgable or experience at writing tickets can do that. -Eric _______________________________________________ boinc_dev mailing list boinc_dev@ssl.berkeley.edu http://lists.ssl.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/boinc_dev To unsubscribe, visit the above URL and (near bottom of page) enter your email address.
