JosefA | # 21 | 2009-11-21, 19:56 | Report

Bugzilla has what can only considered a cruel and inhumane interface. Problem is though, the level of detail required and provided is necessary for the people sufficiently technical to address the actual bugs. In simpler terms, dumbing down bug tracking functionality so anyone can use it is likely to result in bug information which is nigh on unusable for developers.

So if we want nontechnical users to report bugs then it should perhaps be a wiki page where they can register bugs. The bugsquad can take it from there. Any user sufficiently technical will find b.m.o anyhow.

There are simpler systems than Bugzilla (I use trac at work) but they're still too complex for nontechnical users.

krisse | # 22 | 2009-11-21, 19:56 | Report

Long list of ways that Bugzilla is user-unfriendly:

-This page does not properly explain where people are meant to report a problem with their device: https://bugs.maemo.org/enter_bug.cgi Which ordinary user knows what a repo is? Who is going to know who "Maemo Devices" are? Who is going to know which apps are managed by them? For a specific example, which category would a browser bug be reported in?

-How is someone supposed to know the severity of a problem?

-How is someone supposed to know the priority of a problem?

-How is someone supposed to know what terms like "QA Contact", "Assign To", "Alias" mean? I know these don't have to be filled in, but these all add to the scariness of the site, as if it isn't really intended for consumers' eyes.

-Which OS are people supposed to report, the OS on their computer or the OS on their device? And what if they use several OSes on their computers? And why do they have to even give the OS of their computer if the problem is on their device?

-What does "component" mean?

-What does "version" mean? Assuming it means the OS version on their device, how on earth are ordinary users supposed to know what version number they have?

-What are they supposed to put in the URL box? And does everyone actually know what URL means?

-Why does the bug report button say "commit", as if it's some kind of nuclear weapon launch system?

-Why does the bug report window include scary cryptic strings of characters like "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)"? (I know what this all means, but an ordinary user would be baffled by it.)

...these examples are all just off the top of my head. There's a lot more stopping it from being consumer-oriented reporting system.

Bugzilla is great as a tool for developers, but it is almost useless as something intended for a truly mainstream audience.

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Last edited by krisse; 2009-11-21 at 19:59.

silvermountain | # 23 | 2009-11-21, 19:59 | Report

Tried using Bugzilla a few times but have given up on it.
And seriously, if the people that set up that site don't see the issues with it I can't imagine any amount of feedback changing that fact.

It's one of the least user-friendly sites I've ever had the dis-pleasure to be exposed to - and that's from someone who have filed bugs/requests through Oracle bugtracker, Heat, Remedy, etc.

The easier and more efficient way would probaboly be to re-do it from scratch - and to, seriously, ban anyone who had a hand in building bugzilla from participating.

And yes, I find it to be that terrible.

Andre Klapper | # 24 | 2009-11-21, 20:00 | Report

See https://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_Sprints/November_09 for the status.

Andre Klapper | # 25 | 2009-11-21, 20:06 | Report

I don't want another system that is used for "bringing the initial reports into a valuable state before copying them to Bugzilla".
I prefer this to be done in Bugzilla itself.

Sure I want nontechnical users to report **bugs**. I don't want them to file their configuration issues though that belong to a forum or a mailing list, so I don't want Bugzilla to be as easy as a forum where everybody can post without spending a few seconds to think. You might think that this is arrogant but it is actually useful in order to have a useful signal to noise ratio.
Sometimes people file issues in Bugzilla (good), sometimes in this forum, sometimes on mailing lists or IRC. And there are often people around to point them to Bugzilla and to help them in case that these are real bugs and not just misconfigurations or support questions.

As said already: It's not about filing the perfect bug report in Bugzilla. If people are afraid of doing something wrong when filing a report in Bugzilla I wonder how to change this. Maybe by a "If you are unsure just pick up something"?

JosefA | # 26 | 2009-11-21, 20:07 | Report

Umm, no. There is no pain like BMC Remedy.

silvermountain | # 27 | 2009-11-21, 20:08 | Report

Thanks, I see it's at 0%.
What I find missing from that s/sheet is a 'Due Date'-column, that's pretty standard in any project management efforts - how else do you track if you are on-track or not and/or set some expecations for 'customers'?

Andre Klapper | # 28 | 2009-11-21, 20:09 | Report

Newer Bugzilla versions have improvements, and upgrading maemo.org Bugzilla is definitely planned (and already being worked on).
Your last sentence is a little bit insulting to me but I assume that it was not meant like that. Sure, everything can be improved. Always. At least I think that I listen, here, and I'm interested, otherwise I would spend my Saturday evening somewhere else than in this forum...

Andre Klapper | # 29 | 2009-11-21, 20:11 | Report

First task: Yes.
Second one is 9.09-10 and is at 25%.
Help is probably welcome - you could contact the task maintainers.

See "Sprint priority" for that.

silvermountain | # 30 | 2009-11-21, 20:11 | Report

Lol, yeah Remedy wasn't that good. We changed to Heat for various reasons (asset tracking being one) and it's also rather easy to set auto-escalation rules and field customization in Heat.