Tom, I think this is really well explained.
I've been professionally involved in defect reporting for years, and the problems seem to be the same in all organisations. Problems in defect reporting: 1- Qualification of type (A bug is unexpected behaviour which does not comply to the requirements; An enhancement request is new development which changes both requirements and code) 2- Severity (How serious is the bug/enhancement request from users perspective) 3- Priority (What is the priority with respect to other bug/enhancement reports) Neither of these I see in out bugzilla defect reporting... There should be a moderator (not a developer) to map out the priority. One can set out rather strict rules for this, think about amount of complaints for the same, file corruption, system crash, etc. If we would go along these lines we might get away with the tension between (expert-) users and developers. But again, good effort here to get things ironed out, Thanks Tom, Rob. Op 23 nov. 2014, om 04:23 heeft som het volgende geschreven: > > > On Saturday, 22 November 2014 8:39 PM, Tom Davies <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> >> >> Hi :) >> I think there might be a few different things going on there. >> >> Firstly i have no idea how the devs think or work. Clearly they think very >> differently from most users. What seems obvious and makes sense to us is >> clearly 'wrong'. >> >> To me, i'd agree with you, that if it's annoying in one branch and still >> exists in the next then it's likely to be annoying in that branch too. >> Clearly the devs don't think like that at all. Trying to argue the point >> is likely to get you in trouble here. It's one of the reasons i am under >> moderation or even chucked off mailing lists here. >> >> >> What normal users, like us, tend to think of as bugs or stability issues is >> often technically called something else. So far i can only think of 5 but >> i'm sure there are more. The most frequent type of 'bug' reported by >> normal users is often really a "broken feature". That is very different >> from what the devs would call a "bug", as far as i can make out. It's >> certainly NOT a stability issue. Very few bugs are anything to do with >> stability. So when something is broken we have to try to figure out >> whether the devs would call it; >> 1. something that behaves differently from certain other programs (but the >> LO way might well be better) >> 2. something behaving weirdly >> 3. something that changed behaviour >> 4. a broken feature/thing >> 5. a bug >> or >> 6. a bug causing a stability issue >> >> Sometimes there is no practical difference between 1 and 2 or it might be >> just a difference of opinion, ie immensely long and argumentative threads. >> >> We rarely discuss items such as 3 because we mostly just adapt or new >> people are unaware it used to be any different. Sometimes it's intriguing >> or interesting. Occasionally a change in behaviour only happens to 1 >> person and indicates weird things going wrong which all gets fixed by >> renaming the User Profile. More usually it's a positive thing that a few >> people find annoying but most people either don't care or find it an >> improvement. (like when some obscure graphs got smoothed out in a better >> way that gave better results and looked nicer (i think in 3.4.0)). >> >> Mostly what we get here is 4. A long running feature/thing suddenly stops >> working in a new branch. We try renaming the User Profile jic it's that >> (despite it seeming really unlikely) and post a bug-report only to find we >> gets loads of aggro from devs telling us to fix it ourselves or that >> individuals should pay to get it fixed. Sometimes it gets all bitter and >> unnecessary blaming individuals who are all trying to do a good job but >> that sometimes leads to unexpected complications "out in the wild". Maybe >> we should post these as "feature request"s and pretend that it's new in >> order to avoid hurting anyone's feelings? >> >> Very occasionally we get a real 5 but it's actually quite unusual, and >> quite difficult to spot since everything else is also called by the same >> name by most normal users. >> >> We seem to get a real 6 much more often than a real 5 but then it turns out >> to be a Java or other 3rd party issue. We still quite often help fix it. >> I think one time it turned out to be a wobbly graphics card and another >> time a defective fan but usually it's just a case or trying a different >> version of either Java or LibreOffice. >> >> >> Unfortunately pretty much all those things can only be reported by posting >> a bug-report. Feature requests use the bug-reporting systems. In that >> system one of the drop-downs has an option labelled "feature request". We >> can often help with most of them, especially 1 and 2 and even 6 but the >> only route to escalate problems is to post a bug-report. I tried liaising >> with other mailing lists to see if they could help with other issues but it >> earned me a bad reputation so i wouldn't advise it! >> >> >> Now is the ideal time to take the 4.4.0 for a test-drive. It's the number >> 1 time that the most devs are looking for problems in the new branch. It's >> also THE best time to get stuff fixed. New stuff is still fresh in >> people's minds so they might instinctively put their finger right on the >> source of the problem even if the code seems fine to everyone else. >> >> So, please do take the 4.4.0 for a test-drive now and post bug-reports >> about whatever you find (maybe ask here first maybe) even if it doesn't >> really seem to be a bug and seems to fall into one of the other categories >> i made-up on the spot there or some other not-quite-a-bug-really type >> category. >> >> This is also a good time to join in with the QA team to help do routine >> office type work to help make sure the different bugs are all neatly filed >> and stuff so that the devs can focus on the coding rather than getting >> bogged won with filing and routine stuff. >> Regards from >> Tom :) >> > > very well said. > +1 > regards, > som > > -- > To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] > Problems? > http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ > Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette > List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ > All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
