[Idea] Reporting Bugs (1 Viewer)

[tourettes]

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.

We have such place already http://mantis.team-mediaportal.com/

 

[elliottmc]

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.

We have such place already http://mantis.team-mediaportal.com/

But not all bugs reported and even apparently verified by several users actually make it into Mantis, so it is difficult and frustrating for the end user to keep reporting bugs if they aren't going to be acknowledged. I think this is the main point of this thread.

Please don't interpret my comments in any way as a flame. I'm extremely grateful for the MP team, and if MP never works any better than it does right now, I'll just put up with the occasional bug and enjoy it.

Mark

PS. No-one has responded to my offer to help.

 

[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.

We have such place already http://mantis.team-mediaportal.com/

Sure but Mantis is not publicized well at all. I think only a small fraction of people are even aware it exists, and for those that do find it, they have no way of interacting with it, so if they have something to add about a specific bug, they can't do it. They have to go back to the forums.

This leads to what I think is the biggest problem though. As elliottmc mentioned, there is a lot of stuff that probably should be in mantis, but is not. If a user actually does go to mantis to report an issue or get information on when it's fixed, finds it's not listed there, then finds they can't even add it, do you think they will go back there next time they find a bug? I think probably not. These problems stem from the fact that the bug report system is closed, and only "official testers" are allowed to submit something new. Mantis is kept cordoned off. Behind the curtain. Honestly I would love to see mantis (or some other new bug tracking system) opened up to the public, and really pushed, really promoted. And every time someone makes a bug report in the forums, they ought to be sent to mantis instead.

I know the thought of an open bug tracking system sounds intimidating, but if you cut your test team in half and had then have them act as community managers instead of testers, pointing users to the right place for bugs and helping filter out duplicates, I think you'd have a much more comprehensive list of bugs in MediaPortal, and I think the users would feel like they are really being listened to when they come to report a problem. I think this would improve the product and help build the community.

 

[elliottmc]

I'm not convinced about the wisdom of opening up the bug tracking system to the public. This would result in hundreds of false bug reports which would clutter things up for everyone, and increase the workload on the team.

That's why I suggested a policy of moving non-reproducible bugs and reproduced bugs to different places in the forum so that users can see what is actually going on. No sense leaving a bug report in the forum if it is genuinely the fault of the reporter, and if three other people have tried and failed to reproduce it.

And bugs moved and then found to be reproducible can always be moved back.

The simple fact is that MP is very complex, and supports numerous hardware configurations with many different driver versions. It's not surprising that there are many false bug reports, and also that many real bug reports slip through the net. However, we as a community have to do what we can to help the development team.

Best wishes,

Mark

 

[fforde]

I'm not convinced about the wisdom of opening up the bug tracking system to the public. This would result in hundreds of false bug reports which would clutter things up for everyone, and increase the workload on the team.

You might be surprised. Both the Moving Pictures bug tracker and the MPTV-Series bug tracker are open to the public and they work very well. Other open source products like Firefox and Thunderbird have open bug trackers. The Linux Kernel has an open tracker as well as Ubuntu and Debian. Keeping an open bug tracker is a system that has been proven several times over to work and it work well.

You're right it requires additional effort to moderate the tracker, but that is not a task that has to be fulfilled primarily by developers. Like I suggested before, maybe a couple of members of the current Test Team would be willing to become "community managers" to take this burden off of the developers shoulders.

It's just an suggestion and I realize odds are things will not change this drastically. But don't shoot the idea down as if it would never work, because it can and does work for many many other open source projects.