[Idea] Reporting Bugs (1 Viewer)

[revs]

As many people (myself included) do not give the correct information when reporting bugs, my idea/suggestion is that there is a webform that users have to fill in to report a bug.

The webform can then ensure people fill in all the required fields/provide the correct info.

Hopefully this would be more useful than forum posts with "RC9 sucks and doesnt work..bla bla bla.."

 

[tourettes]

I think moderators should be just more keen to push delete button when improper bug "report" is filed in the forums.

 

[elliottmc]

Or possibly an official team of volunteers who can attempt to reproduce the bugs. Then once a bug is verified it could be logged into Mantis.

There are any number of reasons why the end user might not have time to provide log files immediately. Although I know how important they are, I tend to feel that it is better to report a problem so that others might verify it.

Just deleting reports will discourage people from making the effort. Maybe two subsections within the bug forums, for "confirmed bugs" and "incomplete reports". This way, the person reporting knows that their bug is being looked at, or knows that there is a reason why it isn't.

Let's face it though, if five people see the same problem, then chances are there is a problem which one of the devs can reproduce. In this case, the end user providing logs is nice, but not essential.

I'd be happy to volunteer to be part of an official group who try to check bug reports for reproducibility, as long as the team will then act on these reports.

Mark

 

[flokel]

Or possibly an official team of volunteers who can attempt to reproduce the bugs. Then once a bug is verified it could be logged into Mantis.

This official team of volunteers already exists in form of the MediaPortal test team

There are any number of reasons why the end user might not have time to provide log files immediately.

Why should a tester spent time if the user is not even willing to spend a minute or two on collecting and
attaching log files to his posts?
Often the issue can directly be spotted by checking the attached logs files,
so these are very important when reporting bugs.

I'd be happy to volunteer to be part of an official group who try to check bug reports for reproducibility, as long as the team will then act on these reports.

Often there's progress in bug fixing that's not visible to end user in form of direct replies in a thread
as the problem is being discussed internally.

 

[revs]

maybe then we just need a comment such as "bug acknowledged. investigating" on the thread, just so the user feels cared for

 

[elliottmc]

maybe then we just need a comment such as "bug acknowledged. investigating" on the thread, just so the user feels cared for

This would be very nice.

Alternatively, how about allowing all of us access to the developer-only area of the forum, but just as read-only?

Mark

 

[flokel]

maybe then we just need a comment such as "bug acknowledged. investigating" on the thread, just so the user feels cared for

That's the idea behind it,
but you know nobody's perfect

 

[elliottmc]

maybe then we just need a comment such as "bug acknowledged. investigating" on the thread, just so the user feels cared for

That's the idea behind it,
but you know nobody's perfect

Indeed. Including the end users who find the bugs!!!

That was why I volunteered to help.

The other reason why it would make more sense to have logs from a test team rather than end users is that the test team can keep their systems cleaner so that bugs are more likely to be in MediaPortal rather than caused by driver issues.

I really do feel that all bug reports need to be acknowledged by someone "official", and again I'm happy to try to help in this capacity. Since I have a server/client setup, with multiple DVB tuners, I can test any aspects related to DVB and TVE3 in particular.

Mark

 

[fforde]

I think the most important thing is to have a common place where a user can go to see bugs that have already been reported. If users don't have an easy way to lookup existing bugs, they will post duplicate bug reports. And when there are a lot of duplicate reports, developers get frustrated and end up just not responding at all. An understandable but very negative situation.

 

[elliottmc]

Indeed.

The problem at the moment is that there seem to be a few issues which a fair few users are having, but which never make it into Mantis.

It may be that these problems are a result of the users' own system rather than with MediaPortal, but if this is the case then there are presumably solutions, and these should go into the FAQ.

As I keep saying, I'm more than happy to help out in any way I can.

Mark