Wow, it's difficult to unwind a middle-posted message. I think that having a wizard to make reporting bugs easier is a great idea, and will likely increase the number of problem reports you have to work with...
as long as you don't get it in *my* when when I'm trying to report a bug, thank-you-very-much. :-) Making an easy interface available is wonderful, as long as you don't drive power users up the wall with it, an opinion of mine which I'm sure won't be a surprise to anyone who's watched me post here on wikitext and parsers/editors. :-) Cheers, -- jra ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Diederik van Liere" <[email protected]> > To: "Wikimedia developers" <[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2011 10:53:48 PM > Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] How users without programming skills can help > Dear James, Amir and fellow wikimedia devs, > > I understand your concern and I am not suggesting that we should force > a > user to enter all Bugzilla fields but add those 5 questions as a > guideline > in the free-text form. Reporters can use it when they feel uncertain > what > information we are looking for but they are not forced to stick to any > format in particular. > > Additionally, I think that Mediawiki users are as technological > advanced as > Firefox users so I don't think this will scare somebody away. If we > really > want to make it easier for people to file a bug then we should add a > simple > wizard to guide them through the process. In particular choosing the > right > product and component can be quite confusing / intimidating for > somebody new > to Medawiki. > > On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 9:43 PM, James Alexander > <[email protected]>wrote: > > > On 2/13/2011 8:46 PM, Diederik van Liere wrote: > > > I think we can draw some inspiration from Mozilla's use of > > > Bugzilla and > > > particular the format they are encourage users when submitting a > > bugreport: > > > > > > 1) Steps to reproduce > > > 2) Expected result > > > 3) Actual result > > > 4) Reproducible (by bugreporter): always / sometimes > > > 5) Version information, extensions installed, database used (this > > > information is dependent on the skill level of the bugreporter and > > > maybe > > we > > > can add make this information easily retrievable if it's current > > > not easy > > to > > > determine. > > > > > > So maybe we can paste these 5 steps (or something similar) in the > > > initial > > > form used to file a bugreport. > > > > > > This would increase the quality of bugreports and make it easier > > > for bug > > > triaging. > > > > I can totally understand the idea behind this but I think Amir > > brings up > > the concern about this best: > > > > On 2/13/2011 5:56 PM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: > > > bugzilla.wikimedia.org is the tracker where i report more bugs > > > than > > > elsewhere. The second is bugzilla.mozilla.org . It's not because > > > Firefox has less bugs (quite the contrary!) but because Mozilla's > > > tracker requires me to fill more fields, such as steps for > > > reproduction. This may encourage detailed reporting that helps > > > developers solve the bugs, but it may also discourage people from > > > reporting them in the first place. > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > > [email protected] > > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > > > > > > > Gathering all that information on a bug report form could quite > > clearly > > make it easier to reproduce bugs and may make resolving them easier > > but > > I worry that the harder and/or more complicated we make the > > reporting > > the more likely we are to scare someone away from taking the time to > > file the bug (which we want). I'm not totally sure where the best > > balance there is. > > > > -- > > James Alexander > > Associate Community Officer > > Wikimedia Foundation > > [email protected] > > +1-415-839-6885 x6716 > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > > > > > > -- > <a href="http://about.me/diederik";>Check out my about.me profile!</a> > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
