OK, you won't make the suggestion, I will.
A form that guides users through what needs to be in the ticket is an
extremely good idea. It would be very useful to have something like this.
I would suggest that this be done.
You could have set of volunteers that have experience writing tickets or
reading tickets be the first line for weeding through the problem reports
and generating tickets. Some of us do this a LOT in our current or former
jobs.
The set of volunteers would be vetted by the developers (they probably
already have some ideas of who they would like doing this).
Proposed work flow:
Somebody fills out the form (must be logged in to BOINC, or possibly one of
the projects or fill out a re-captcha). Possibly have a report a BOINC bug
link on each project web site. Would also be useful to have a "report a
project application bug" on each project web site.
An email goes to the list of volunteers with the contents of the form.
The volunteers collaborate on whether it is a bug, and whether there is
probably enough information to resolve. If it IS NOT a bug, it is probably
forwarded to the BOINC_helpers email list. If it IS a bug one of them is
designated to write a trac ticket, or update an existing one.
The trac ticket is assigned to a developer by the development team....
jm7
Eric Myers
<my...@spy-hill.n
et> To
"John.McLeod"
05/21/2009 09:36 <john.mcl...@sybase.com>
AM cc
Nicolás Alvarez
<nicolas.alva...@gmail.com>,
boinc_dev@ssl.berkeley.edu
Subject
Re: [boinc_dev] BOINC All versions
download page
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
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