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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: reporting bugs is way to easy
From:       Harri Porten <harri () trolltech ! com>
Date:       2000-08-30 13:56:23
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Andreas Pour wrote:
> 
> Here are some suggestions that may help:
> 
>   (1)  already discussed, do not permit a backtrace to be sent if there
> are no debugging symbols.  OTOH, non-crash reports (like
> http://my.favorite.site/ does not render properly) should still be
> allowed.

Sure. But I would like to point out that "severity: wishlist" has quite
a high volume, too.

>   (2)  harder to implement, get a group of volunteer testers together.
> Get 1-2 people responsible for each app and they go through the reports
> for these apps.  They can filter these as non-useful, non-reproduceable,
> already fixed or requires developer attention.
> 
> Point (2) sounds daunting but there are many people who say they are not
> programmers who ask to volunteer.  If this job is posted separately at
> http://www.kde.org/jobs.html and a group is started like the translation
> teams and an announcement for testers is made perhaps some people will
> join?

I tried this (see jobs.html). Didn't work. Several volunteers but none
of them actually started. After all you need quite some knowledge to
help.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't ask for testers. But this is not a model
for fighting the bug report flood.

The only other solution (only half sincere) goes back to an idea by Don:
"We are sorry. Application XXX has more than 100 bugs reported. The
maintainer is overloaded. Please consider helping to help fixing a bug"
;)

All in all, I think the built-in reporting system might not be the
optimal solution (for us as volunteer workers). A web form that would
give some feedback (FAQ, list of known bugs) might have been more
appropriate.

Harri.

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