Bug 55378008 - bugteam overworked

[lcuk]

SOFTWARE VERSION:
All Year 2010 versions, earlier models did not exhibit this behaviour

EXACT STEPS LEADING TO PROBLEM:

1) inexperienced new user identifies a problem with their device
2) they have been told in many places to file bugs and get involved with the community.
3) they come to bugzilla and get over their nerves and file a bug

EXPECTED OUTCOME:

Bug triage team process the bug and try to ensure its processed efficiently and directed to the correct area.
hopefully those inexperienced users will get better next time at filing things and may actually be a valuable asset to us.

ACTUAL OUTCOME:

Bug triage team publicly berate users who try to help and offer information.


REPRODUCIBILITY:
Certain areas are more common than others

EXTRA SOFTWARE INSTALLED:


OTHER COMMENTS:

this bug is definately a regression from the old ways of handling things.

we may require additional technical help to allow the hard working triagers to close off frustrating bug reports or have a high priority mechanism to pre-warn users without putting them off bugzilla for life.


this bug is linked to #71077345 : bug triagers lack a sense of humour.

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5

[Laughingstok]

+1 for attempted humor. :)

[RevdKathy]

I can't seem to vote. Do I need some special log in for this?

[smarsh]

I laughed so hard my head fell off. Which may also be a bug in the user interface for homo sapiens.

Regardless, I'll bite. I had until recently no idea or inclination as to the correct procedure for doing to (expressing my interest in triaging) or even if it's feasible, but, for those who don't know like I didn't, a little searching just now found https://wiki.maemo.org/Bugsquad and I'll do my part and triage.

S

[NvyUs]

I can't seem to vote. Do I need some special log in for this?
file a new bug report for your problem :D

[RevdKathy]

I laughed so hard my head fell off. Which may also be a bug in the user interface for homo sapiens.

Would you like my to file a bug direct with the designer/manufacturer for that when I next speak to Him/Her?

[smarsh]

Would you like my to file a bug direct with the designer/manufacturer for that when I next speak to Him/Her?

Sure, put in a good word for me. I've always popped up on the wrong side of Pascal's wager to date...

[Texrat]

So we can file bugs against personality quirks????

:eek:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a whole new ball game... :D

[GeneralAntilles]

I gotta say, lcuk, I'm not terribly impressed with this thread. The attempt at humor belies the seriousness of the issue, and it feels somewhat disingenuous to me to not point to the source (http://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5357) (especially on Talk).*

If we want Nokia to participate in our public bugtracker (and we do), then users can't treat it like a forum. Multi-hundred comment, Talk-style "bugs" aren't a good way to get things fixed. They scare away the engineers and managers who can actually help us and make the lives of our our small team of triagers much more difficult by drowning out any useful or relevant information in a sea of "Me too!", "This sux! Nokia sux!", and "When will it be released?" spam.

As users, you want bugs to be fixed in a timely and mutually agreeable fashion. Treating a bug tracker like a forum is an excellent way to work against that goal. Please don't do it.


The bug was FIXED somewhere between comment #14 and #75. It's since been flooded with forum-style spam. Several users received (and ignored) multiple warnings about this so two final warnings and one ban were issued (http://viper.haque.net/~timeless/blog/171/). This sort of user behavior is not an isolated incident, but something that's been building steadily over the last few months which has now resulted in this culmination.

[Texrat]

/me files bug to fix GA's humor function... :p

[thenokiablog]

ACTUAL OUTCOME:

Bug triage team publicly berate users who try to help and offer information.


I definitely see this on bugzilla and actually prevented me from filing future bugs there.

[GeneralAntilles]

/me files bug to fix GA's humor function... :p

Humor or not, this is Talk and we know how Talk reacts to this sort of stuff.

[Texrat]

Humor or not, this is Talk and we know how Talk reacts to this sort of stuff.

Oh crap... you just opened the Us vs Them door...

[Texrat]

I definitely see this on bugzilla and actually prevented me from filing future bugs there.

You'll never see it from Andre, and his opinion is the only one that counts.

(:p to everyone else)

[GeneralAntilles]

Oh crap... you just opened the Us vs Them door...

I've got more than enough experience with this behavioral phenomenon here to be justified. :)

[lcuk]

as a stop gap, can't we just move the bugzilla comment box to the bottom?
make people read the bugs before posting, and have a clear indicator a fix is pending if that is the case.

[geneven]

I thought the whole purpose of Bugzilla was to pretend to be concerned about bugs so that people couldn't complain if they ran into them because they weren't willing to file them in Bugzilla.

Seriously, the better way to handle this issue is to get a volunteer group called Bug Patrol to watch threads for bug reports, ask additional questions, and file them in Bugzilla.

Users not qualified to file bug reports should not be encouraged to file them, obviously.

[thenokiablog]

Seriously, the better way to handle this issue is to get a volunteer group called Bug Patrol to watch threads for bug reports, ask additional questions, and file them in Bugzilla.

Users not qualified to file bug reports should not be encouraged to file them, obviously.

That's actually a really good idea!

[Texrat]

That's actually a really good idea!

...yet when General Antilles ventured into that territory, he was assailed with arrows. :rolleyes:

[Texrat]

as a stop gap, can't we just move the bugzilla comment box to the bottom?
make people read the bugs before posting, and have a clear indicator a fix is pending if that is the case.

+1.

Beautiful. And it was your idea, too. :p

[smarsh]

+1.

Beautiful. And it was your idea, too. :p

I'll go for that. Reading things before you comment on them always seemed to make sense to me, anyway.

[smarsh]

Humor or not, this is Talk and we know how Talk reacts to this sort of stuff.

I don't. Enlighten me.

Oh wait, let's see: A flood of invective intermixed with some profoundly sill thoughts and a smattering of rather good ideas, some of which get spotted and worked on and improved, and, in the long term, improve the lot of all.

Treating bugs like a holy grail (*) is not, in my opinion, a great way to achieve what might help, which is more committed triagers. Or don't you want that? Weeding out the inanities is probably a job even the numpties amongst us could do(?)

I've never been in a job of work or play where humour didn't play a part, not even in the military. There are times when it's inappropriate, absolutely. This isn't one of them.

Even Grace had the grace to find humour in debugging...

(*) I now can't get out of my head the visions of King Arthur and his silly English Ker-nigghts womping around the countryside in search for same. Oh well, another normal day on the job then.

[GeneralAntilles]

I don't. Enlighten me.


Easy, people don't take a look at the situation from all sides, arrive at the conclusion that the evil maemo.org people are trying to keep down the little guy and it results in more vitriol and bile getting spread around.

Your idea of the results only occurs when the initial posting here manages to take a neutral view of the issue. lcuk, unfortunately, set things up to bias the unhumored reading it against the triagers working hard in Bugzilla.

[jaark]

I'll go for that. Reading things before you comment on them always seemed to make sense to me, anyway.

Yes, and that's why you're not causing the problems with bugzilla.

Moving the comment boxis a good idea and may help but I don't think that it will solve the problem. The comment box on talk is at the bottom of the screen and yet there are dozens of examples where the same question is asked and answered repeatedly within a thread.
Maybe I'm just cynical.

[daperl]

GA, I support you 100% on this one. I'm not saying the system is perfect, but this is one area where I have no problem with people erring on the side of humorless. And if people continue to not understand this, I might be forced to tell the only Finnish joke I know. But that's unlikely.

[slender]

Whou...
Hey guys!

We want to keep bugzilla nice and tidy and efficent. Right?

Situation now:

Some people are chatting and making incomplete bug reports (BUT incomplete maybe better than non, but more about this later). All this is making whole process actually harder. When talking about bugzilla we can talk about so called noise and that place should be somehow a bit hostile or demanding if we wan to say it nicer way. It´s not probably newbies fault because we encourage people to go there and make bug reports and reality is that you should read all the information about bug reporting from wiki (I haven't read, i do not have time) before you make you report. Not all are natural born bug report writers :)

SO Why on earth we do not have BUGs forum area here. It would make complete sense. There could be couple of stickys where all the important wiki and other links are collected and couple of GOOD examples how to report bug.

This would be also great place for bug squad whose mission would be to make bug reporting better. Newbies could first report their bugs on forum and then bug reporting squad would try to get information from user and make hints how she/he could make report better.

BUT I think that bug reporting in bugzilla should still stay open to all, but bug-area here would suck most of the "noise" what is now going on bugzilla.

So users would still be able to make noise in bugzilla, but they would have exact place to go (right now its just talk.maemo) and rant their issue. After review and help iterations from bug squad it could be decent bug report. Only thing that I would demand from this squad is that they would never ever engage to insults :| Concentrate only to users issue even though we have total ******* on the other side.

So make your suggestions and smash mine :)

[smarsh]

Easy, people don't take a look at the situation from all sides, arrive at the conclusion that the evil maemo.org people are trying to keep down the little guy and it results in more vitriol and bile getting spread around.

Your idea of the results only occurs when the initial posting here manages to take a neutral view of the issue. lcuk, unfortunately, set things up to bias the unhumored reading it against the triagers working hard in Bugzilla.

I take your point, although I didn't read the post like that at all. In fact, I saw an attempt to engage the community via the time-honoured British tradition of sarcastic humour. It has the effect of engaging, encouraging critical thought, and, yes, pissing people off. (It's possible I misread the sarcasm bit, but this is how I read it anyway - I'm a Brit after all)

But like I said in another post, I'd like us all to get along(!)

I dunno about the bias though. I have found a bunch of different people here: those who have the preconceived idea of evil you present (and I know, there are some idiots in the world) and those who will read, see the humour, and perhaps get something out of it (hence me 'I'll bite' comment with a link to be able to help, just to nudge some the right way in case).

I'd be the first to admit I don't know the half of the problems in bugzilla for those triaging. I have said before I find it cumbersome and intimidating. It shouldn't be and I wonder how we can fix that (per RevdKathy amongst others in this thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=41775) and I know that others feel we shouldn't because we'd only encourage the unwashed masses.

But, consider you might encourage those of us who are squeaky clean behind the ears too. Just a thought.

I have the greatest respect and admiration for anyone who does a job for the community. I know from personal experience it's often thankless, and often misunderstood. You all have my thanks, you've earned it by helping to make the platform I use on a daily basis as excellent as it is. I don't know any of you other than through this forum, but I owe you a pint when next I see you. And you can print this and use it when you do see me (but you have to prove you've triaged at least 3 bugs, I don't give beer away for nothing). I think Andre gets a night's worth of suds.

But, here's the thing. If you're overworked, surely using the community to provide help is the way to try to solve the problem? If you agree it is, what's the best way?

[smarsh]

GA, I support you 100% on this one. I'm not saying the system is perfect, but this is one area where I have no problem with people erring on the side of humorless. And if people continue to not understand this, I might be forced to tell the only Finnish joke I know. But that's unlikely.

I know someone who was a diplomat with a posting in Finland. He knows lots of Finnish jokes. But they're not appropriate for this forum :eek:

[GeneralAntilles]

Moving the comment boxis a good idea and may help but I don't think that it will solve the problem. The comment box on talk is at the bottom of the screen and yet there are dozens of examples where the same question is asked and answered repeatedly within a thread.
Maybe I'm just cynical.

Hehe, well, Talk is a forum. ;)

As soon as we get 3.4 installed we can look more closely at changing the bug form UI to be more friendly. Moving the comment box, adding the guided submission form, etc. I'd like to see the bug voting system made more obvious and straightforward, since that's how we want people telling us they experience the bug (rather than commenting).

[smarsh]

Whou...
Hey guys!

We want to keep bugzilla nice and tidy and efficent. Right?

...

So make your suggestions and smash mine :)

Bug forum sounds interesting to me. Damn, I agreed with you. I could smite the suggestion if you like, viz:
---
No, you're wrong. Only those with a 5 star credit rating may spot and file bugs. A Top Secret clearance is required to fix them.

Any good?
---
No, a bugs discussion area to clear out the bugzilla seems like it might work, but I'm honestly not sure whether those with an intimate knowledge of the thing would agree, cos I can't read minds mostly (yes, I admit to failings)

[smarsh]

Hehe, well, Talk is a forum. ;)

As soon as we get 3.4 installed we can look more closely at changing the bug form UI to be more friendly. Moving the comment box, adding the guided submission form, etc. I'd like to see the bug voting system made more obvious and straightforward, since that's how we want people telling us they experience the bug (rather than commenting).

Now, that makes sense and I'd welcome it with open arms.

How can I help?

[jaark]

Hehe, well, Talk is a forum. ;)

Aye, I suppose the problem is that many users spot the similarity of interface but miss the fundamental difference between Bugzilla and a forum.

FWIW, I also caught the flippancy and sarcasm in the original post as a humourous hook into a serious subject. I'm also from the Eastern side of the pond and it appealed to my sense of humour.

I don't know any Finnish jokes :(

[GeneralAntilles]

I take your point, although I didn't read the post like that at all. In fact, I saw an attempt to engage the community via the time-honoured British tradition of sarcastic humour. It has the effect of engaging, encouraging critical thought, and, yes, pissing people off. (It's possible I misread the sarcasm bit, but this is how I read it anyway - I'm a Brit after all)


Unfortunately many people will, and the result is usually a higher initial level of tension and increased likeliness for things to spiral down the drain more quickly.


But, here's the thing. If you're overworked, surely using the community to provide help is the way to try to solve the problem? If you agree it is, what's the best way?

Conning people into triaging isn't an easy task. ;) Basically, though, triagers are always going to be overworked. Only a certain percentage of a community has the drive and the interest to pitch in triaging a bug tracker. It's generally thankless, difficult work that doesn't generate much karma (only comments and new bugs generate karma). So as a community grows, its base of triagers tends to grow proportionally. Artificially increasing it through activism is usually only effective in the short term. ;)

[jaark]

Also add my support for making bug voting more obvious.

Also, is there scope for a talk thread to be created alongside and linked to a bug - you could then have a nice obvious 'discuss this bug <here>' link near the big voting buttons (I know a bugs forum has been discussed, but this is subtly different ;)).

[GeneralAntilles]

How can I help?

For now we're blocking on Karsten getting all of the software patched up for the upgrade (Nokia isn't releasing him for nearly enough hours . . .). If you happen to be intimately familiar with Bugzilla (particularly versions 2.2 and 3.4), then once I manage to get him to put up a public VCS you're welcome to start poking at it. ;)

If not, be thinking about friendly-making UI improvements.

[GeneralAntilles]

Also add my support for making bug voting more obvious.

Also, is there scope for a talk thread to be created alongside and linked to a bug - you could then have a nice obvious 'discuss this bug <here>' link near the big voting buttons (I know a bugs forum has been discussed, but this is subtly different ;)).

There are ways to do that (the URL field is really only used for the browser stuff, and then only infrequently). We could probably make a proper system for it, although I'm hesitant to divide the discussion over two locations like that.

[smarsh]

For now we're blocking on Karsten getting all of the software patched up for the upgrade (Nokia isn't releasing him for nearly enough hours . . .). If you happen to be intimately familiar with Bugzilla (particularly versions 2.2 and 3.4), then once I manage to get him to put up a public VCS you're welcome to start poking at it. ;)

If not, be thinking about friendly-making UI improvements.

I'm not intimately familiar with a great many things, but I have thought intimately about users. I'll re-examine bugzilla in that light, and if anyone wants to help, PM me, or post suggestions such as those coming in here, to this thread .

How's that sound? I commit to working toward community-based suggestions for user-focused improvements in the next few weeks.

S

[jaark]

I'm hesitant to divide the discussion over two locations like that.

Normally I would agree with you, but it is clear that things can break down catastrophically here. The USSD thing is a case in point. So much discussion and argument within the bug report is worse than having a two-tiered information source. Hopefully the information would remain in bugzilla in a more 'distilled' form and people participating in the discussion side of things could direct any useful info arising there to the bug report. The important thing is a 1-1 relationship between the bug entry and the discussion thread.

Another thing that could help (again drawing from the USSD stuff) is a clear and prominent description of the various states (many people seemed confused by the term 'FIXED') - and to go with that many some sort of profile option to turn off such description displays from those who value our scree real-estate ;)

[GeneralAntilles]

I'm not intimately familiar with a great many things, but I have thought intimately about users. I'll re-examine bugzilla in that light, and if anyone wants to help, PM me, or post suggestions such as those coming in here, to this thread .


Mockups much appreciated! If I can get Karsten to put that VCS up I'll start digging into the meat and seeing where I can get.

To give you a general sort of idea of the sort of thing we're looking at, see the existing guided form (https://bugs.maemo.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Email&format=guided) (which kind of sucks).


How's that sound? I commit to working toward community-based suggestions for user-focused improvements in the next few weeks.


Great!

[jaark]

I'll throw out suggestions but you really don't want UI mockup from me - I think that vi is friendly enough ;)

[fms]

I can't seem to vote. Do I need some special log in for this?
File a bug report! By all means, file a bug report!

[GeneralAntilles]

Another thing that could help (again drawing from the USSD stuff) is a clear and prominent description of the various states (many people seemed confused by the term 'FIXED') - and to go with that many some sort of profile option to turn off such description displays from those who value our scree real-estate ;)

Hey ho (https://bugs.maemo.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html#status)! There are links next to most of the bug fields that take you to descriptions, but they're not particularly obvious, and the descriptions aren't always super friendly (particularly in the looks department, some diagrams wouldn't be remise).

I'd really like to revise not only the submission form for people without canconfirm, but also the bug format itself (a large number of those fields are completely non-relevant to users and just serve to contribute to the confusion).

[masq]

Probably in the spirit of a lazy/busy user who can't be bothered to read through this whole thread and likewise careful search through a list of bug reports I'd gonna add my suggestion which has probably already been made before.

When I wanted to post a question on the forum I did a search to see if it was already addressed and didn't see anything relevant (I've forgotten what the question was about). When I actually was gonna post the question the forum prompted me that there are several related threads (gathering the necessary information off my post I guess) and in fact one of them already answered my question. So, sadly, the automated search based off my post was more clever than my own and avoided an unnecessary thread.

I think the same engine running on the bug-tracker would go a long way to solving the problem and wouldn't even require users to be clever enough to pre-vet their bugs. I'm not familiar with the forum software or bugzilla but maybe some component from here could be reused there.

[jaark]

Hey ho (https://bugs.maemo.org/page.cgi?id=fields.html#status)! There are links next to most of the bug fields that take you to descriptions, but they're not particularly obvious, and the descriptions aren't always super friendly (particularly in the looks department, some diagrams wouldn't be remise).

Oh yes, I knew they were there, but unless you go exploring you aren't going to find them - especially if you believe that you already know what, say, 'fixed' means. I meant to copy the relevant descriprions onto the page with the bug report.

Is the new version of bugzilla skinnable? If so, maybe have two skins available, a 'newbie' skin with that sort of information, nice big vote button and big link to a discussion thread. I would also consider taking out the various contact and assigned addresses from this skin. Then also have an 'old-hand' skin which is pretty much the normal bugzilla interface and have this user-selectable. The 'point-n-moan' class of user that is arguably causing the current bugzilla overload are unlikely to bother changing skin (or even find the setting).

[RevdKathy]

Here come the furry paws.

I like the direction this has taken. :)

I should say I loved the first post, and found it hysterically funny. Though I admit it was very British humour. That's Humour with a 'u'. ;) I also thought, being Brit humour, it was actually quite gentle with the bugsquad. I read it as in some part maing the point that they are desperately overworked. Indeed, it made me feel more tolerant towards their brusque responses. But you probably have to be born and raised on Brit humour to get that sense from it.

The idea of a Bugzuki (or is that Buggy-doo?) little brother for Bugzilla is extremely appealing to me. Something that connected a comments type interface (like talk) with the serious bug-file might be enormously useful all round. New users could post their 'bugs', many of which prove either not to be bugs or to be more complex than the initial file. And others could chime in with 'Actually if you do it this way, it works' or 'That only happens if you do this' or even 'Yes we know. There's already a file'. Which would take a lot of weight off the bugsquad. And should mean that bugs are a bit more refined before they reach the monster himself. Then triagers could skim the thread only if they need further information. Or the Bugzuki mod could point up particularly useful comments for the triagers and filter out the repeats, rants and other not-bug stuff.

And Finnish jokes deemed 'unsuitable for the forum'? You know where my PM box is. :D

[GeneralAntilles]

Is the new version of bugzilla skinnable? If so, maybe have two skins available, a 'newbie' skin with that sort of information, nice big vote button and big link to a discussion thread. I would also consider taking out the various contact and assigned addresses from this skin. Then also have an 'old-hand' skin which is pretty much the normal bugzilla interface and have this user-selectable. The 'point-n-moan' class of user that is arguably causing the current bugzilla overload are unlikely to bother changing skin (or even find the setting).

Well, the way you'd do it is based on the user's permissions level. canconfirm users get the full form, anybody else gets a reduced one.

[jaark]

Well, the way you'd do it is based on the user's permissions level. canconfirm users get the full form, anybody else gets a reduced one.

That's a good way of doing it. There's plenty more controls on a typical bugzilla page than I need to be playing with. Repeatedly getting noddy definitions of statuses and stuff would irritate me - but that's precisely what greasemonkey is there to fix :)

[pelago]

Maybe above the comment box should be some text like "Please only comment if you have something technically useful to add. If you experience this bug too, then please vote for it" (with "vote for it" linked).

I think it would also be useful to relax the limit of 20 bug votes per person per section.

[Lord Raiden]

We've always tried to teach our users that, when filing a bug, ALWAYS ALWAYS do your homework beforehand. That's one of the things that used to totally piss off my helpdesk guys. "You're coming to me with this problem, and yet the complete answer is in the FAQ!? What's wrong with this picture!?" It's pretty bad when you have a complete, detailed FAQ that took weeks to build, and yet is ignored by 90% of the staff.

Most common line by helpdesk staff. "RTFM the FAQ, page 156!" of which the most common reply to that is, "I know that. Can you do it for me instead?" It brings to mind those "Fuuuuuuuu" comics. lol. Our helpdesk always hated me when I came to them, but it was for a different reason. I *DID* do my homework, and by the time I brought it to them, the problem was nigh on unsolvable. lol. My little problems tended to turn into five hour marathons of futility. ^_^;; But, they always appreciated the fact that I did all my footwork before coming to them, thus eliminating all simple or easily solvable problems myself. :D That just left the real wingdingers for them. ;)