On Jul 9, 2005, at 10:29 AM, Derek Bump wrote:
Mark Wieder wrote:
Excuse me? ALL your customers have to do is bitch somewhere on a
listserv and their complaints magically get taken care of? You don't
use any bugtracking tools to track and prioritize your work? You
don't
have any idea how often certain features have been suggested or the
severity level of bugs? Oh, sorry, from some of your posts I almost
had you mistaken for a real developer. My bad.
I happen to agree with Jon. I have noticed that people are more
likely to complain publicly about a product than contacting it's
manufacturer and informing them of their trouble.
Example #1: My friend swears up and down that Ford trucks are the
best and Chevy trucks are the worst. He owned 1 Chevy truck, then
2 Fords, and did he contact Chevy to tell them about the problems
that his truck had...nope.
Example #2: An ex-girlfriend of mine detests the Applebees
restaurant because she got a chicken sandwich and it wasn't cooked
all the way. Now she tells everyone how bad Applebees is. Did she
talk to the manager or write the company to let them know there was
a problem...nope.
Example #3: 90% of the people I know in the computer world are
unsatisfied with Microsoft Windows (All Versions). Have they ever
written a letter or email to let Microsoft know about the bugs that
they experienced...nope. (In most cases they would either switch to
a Mac or just live with it hoping that Microsoft would read their
minds.)
I too have received complaints about my software, as well as bug
reports, but in the end the best way I've been able to see what
people want is to read the reviews that people post about my
program. Whether it be on CNET.com or some random bulletin board.
And you know what...I've seen more public posts than emails or
letters combined.
Derek Bump
Dreamscape Software
There are two sides to this. How many times has someone complained
of a bug on this list only to find (with the help of the good folks
here) that it was programmer error? Does Rev have a person with no
other responsibilities than monitoring every message and following
all the threads for days or weeks to their logical conclusion to see
if it was in fact something "they" need to add to the bug list?
The point is that there is a good system in place for the independent
members of this list to discuss their problems, find a logical cause
and do something about it --fix the program, fix the misconception,
make a formal bug report in due time after reflecting on the
situation and performing tests, and at times even providing patches
to the IDE.
The bug report is the conclusion of a collaborative process that
helps RunRev understand how to produce the bug on different machines
and how severe it is (no workarounds). We are helping ourselves by
following this process, because we are helping RunRev focus their
resources on fixing the severe problems instead of scattering their
resources on trying to track all the conversations on this list --
then monitoring the bug reports to see if a valid one was not
generated within x days.
We know that RunRev does have technical people "monitoring" this
list, and they do take action before the bug reports are filed when
something causes a big stir on the list. So they are not just doing
nothing until a bug report is filed. But we must also take
responsibility for our threads. The person who reports the problem
in a thread, should make a BZ entry when it has been determined that
it really is a bug, or ask one of the other confirmers to do it if
they don't feel able to do it.
We are not just idle gossipers and malcontents, we are users with a
vested interest in seeing bugs fixed and new features added that make
our lives easier.
Dennis
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