Jim Wagner wrote:
Matt Needles wrote:
Jallan wrote:
<snip>
It's hard to avoid information on reporting a bug.
Jallan
The problem is, as is evidenced by the OP's language and tone, that he
is either a PROUD software engineer, or LAZY, or BOTH. If someone
WANTS to see bugs fixed, he'll take the troubles to get the bug
reported in adequate terms so it can be fixed. I've tried both
Mozilla's Bugzilla and our IssueZilla sites, and find ours easier, and
the responses more friendly and helpful. I'm interested in seeing OOo
get better, so I try to report everything I can.
I gave up on trying to report bugs over a year ago, after I spent
several hours of time when I should have been writing trying to work out
what keywords to use to search for reports of the same bug.
Why and how could you spend several hours of time "trying to work out
what keywords to use"? Use some that make sense. If nothing comes up
that matches your problem, do it again with some other keywords. If
after five or six attempts nothing still comes up, then report the problem.
What were you spending these hours doing?
And this is not intended as an insult. This is a simple question. What
was the problem for you with the interface?
However, making generalized insults at the people who can't figure out
the Help menus, or can't work out the Issuezilla process is not helpful
to anyone.
Making generalized insults against the interface and undetailed comments
about spending hours working with it are not helpful, when others don't
have this difficulty. It's like people who complain that using styles
are too hard, or that programming in a structure fashion with using goto
is too hard, or that programming a VCR recorder is too hard.
Some things are difficult for some people and not others, and different
things may be easy for the same people and not others.
Your post reminds me of the many answers I've seen to problems brought
up, "It works for me."
"It works for me" or "I can't duplicate the problem" is a reasonable
response and often heartening response, part of the debugging process.
For example, in any workplace environment when one user has a problem,
one of the first things to do is to attempt to duplicate it on another
machine, to see for example, whether email is down for everyone, or just
that one user.
Now, that's helpful. The person who wrote in the problem can't get it
to work for them, and the reasons may be many, and in many cases are
mere misunderstandings of what they're supposed to do. "It works for
me" basically says "You're a lamer because you can't make it work."
No, it basically says "It works for me" and nothing more than that. I've
asked about problems on boards, and the information that other people
can get it to work, when that is the initial answer, is valuable. I know
then that it's not a general bug, that if others have got it to work,
then it's worth my spending more time on the problem.
"It works for me, have you tried X," would be a little better.
Of course, and that's what often does appear as a response, if the
responder has any ideas about what might work. Sometimes they don't.
In this case, I"m being told I'm lazy because I can't work out the
instructions on a page. Thanks, fellow. Glad to see such useful
statements.
You were not told that *you* were lazy. But someone who calls himself a
software engineer, not you, ought be able to figure out an interface
that asks one to answer the same kinds of questions that any software
engineer would themselves ask a user when debugging a problem.
Provide constructive criticism. Don't whine about something being too
hard. But remember also, that all of us do sometimes get stuck on
things, sometimes very trivial trivial. All of use are "lamers" on
occasion, and spend hours on things which, when we master them, realize
that what had been a problem really shouldn't have been a problem for us.
And, of course, any interface can be improved, but probably won't be
without constructive criticism.
Jallan
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