> For a while, i thought that testers knew how to write good bug reports, but > i actually see better bug reports on the mailing lists for open-source > developer tools. Are developers better than testers are reporting problems?
Yes, developers on open-source projects are *much* better at reporting problems. The bad questions and noise on this list and every other list should get handled in an evolutionary way. There are a couple of canonical things that tend to happen, in my experience: 1) ignore the clueless and they will go away. If they turn into trolls, don't bait them, they'll go away. Don't spend time answering silly questions. 2) Flame the clueless and they will leave. This is not the best solution, but it tends to happen frequently. 3) Make a special place for rank beginners to go. The Perl community did this a number of years ago. Newbies on comp.lang.perl were being viciously flamed, and a lot of the leaders of the Perl community were starting to fear that there might not be a next generation of Perl programmers if such an attitude continued. So they started a mail list for beginners. Today, basic and/or ignorant questions are gently routed to the beginners list. Many important figures in the Perl community (Randal Schwartz and Tim Bunce, for instance) spend significant amounts of time helping the newbies, but the newbies also find that they can help each other. As a beginner, finding that you can answer someone else's question is immensely empowering. Personally, I learned quite a lot on the Perl beginner's mail list, enough to hold my own in the perlmonks community for a year or so, enough to pick up Ruby when Watir came out. What do you think about a watir-beginners list? (I'm not sure a ruby-beginners list is warranted at this point, but I think a watir-beginners list would be useful.) I would spend at least some time helping beginners on a beginners list, where I am not inclined to help them on the main list. What do you think? -Chris _______________________________________________ Wtr-general mailing list Wtr-general@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/wtr-general
