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Bug Reporting Etiquette
Jamie Zawinski writes "Mozilla.org has a new article on Bugzilla Etiquette. Relevant to more than just Bugzilla, this should be required reading for anyone who wants to file a bug about any product, no matter what bug tracking system is in use. I especially like the mention that "'Open Source' is not the same as 'the developers must do my bidding.'"" Update: 03/19 21:26 GMT by T : If that link doesn't work for you without cutting and pasting, reader Stephen Ostermiller suggests "you might want to use this link which appears to be the same document mirrored elsewhere."
Amazing. A post to what's basically a "RTFM" to anyone submitting a bug.
Doing this simply creates intimidation. What if some newbie found an integral bug, gets a "RTFM" and is too intimidated to report the bug?
Anyone who has been assailed by "RTFM" in chat rooms can understand where I'm coming from.
Honestly, if open source takes over, the gripe will go from MS to RTFM. Its something that should be addressed now instead of later.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I especially like this one:
Yeah, real professional there. You don't like the tone of the bug notice so you're just going to ignore it. Way to take pride in your work. Listen, guys, if someone points out a bug -- and if you take any pride in your work -- then make an attempt to fix it even if the submitter didn't phrase it nicely. After all, do you really give a shit what some pimply faced puke thinks of you? No, you just want your code to be the best it can be. Don't think you're "teaching this submittor a lesson" by ignoring the bug report. That's just playing childish games.
It isn't that at all, though... all they are asking for are some very simple things, things that a newbie would probably do anyway. They are just asking that you don't put pointless comments, that you don't feel that the bug HAS to be fixed, and that you don't abuse or troll in the bug post. Most newbies would probably follow that pretty good on their own already... this is probably more aimed at those who have been around for a little bit, and have posted aimless comments, or have lost sight of the fact that the developers don't have to fix their bug immediately.
And so we go, on with our lives
We know the truth, but prefer lies
Lies are simple, simple is bliss
Seriously, behave like you would if you were talking to his face. A redundant comment would be met with "Yes, I _know_" even though noone would add that (also) redundant comment to the comments board. Also it'd cut down on flamefests. So many people get real obnoxious for no particular reason except they can sit in front of a computer screen and do it, kinda like the online version of the school bully. About as mature too.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Look at my sig, see my little sig? That's my brother in law's website i've been working on for 2 years, Unpaid, volunteer if you will.
/s's or other characters like & with /a's. Not to mention some of the messy installs by postnuke modules. Over the last 2 years, there were 3 occasions I cleaned it up, got it running on another server, said "Here look! I just spent 40 hours putting the database back together, can I implement the cleaned up database now? Unfortunatly he didn't understand what I was doing, and rather than make the smart choice, he went with the safe choice. I.e. it appears to be workin right, so it must be working right, let's not fuck with it.
Well, yesterday I had one of those straws that broke the camels back. I quit! We've been hosting happily on hurricane electric for the last 2 years now, but recently a buddy of his from a competing website offered to host the site for us. Since I am the only guy that can read PHP, move databases and the site around, I thought I'd ask the new hoster a few questions...
My brother in law told me you were gonna stoke us out? How far are you willing to stoke us out?
I'd like to run 2 daemons. One will be a shoutcast radio station supplied by licensed local bay area talent. The other doesn't really have anything to do with zero, it's called kaillera, it basically allows you to play emulator games online, and I'd like to run a small 20 person server(optional, up to you of course).
Also minimally we'd like 4 databases. I'd like two for a playground, then I need 2 for production.
How about 1u of rack? We have a dual PIII Xeon, but no place decent to put the little red bsd devil.
Now I didn't make any demands, I just asked a few questions about the enviroment, and was checking to see if they would let us have any "extra's"
Well I got a call from him the day after sending that mail out accusing me of making demands on the new hoster, and how it wasn't my place as webmaster to ask these kinds of questions, blah blah blah. Instead of getting upset and arguing with him on the spot, I just calmly said "O.K." and took the last 2 years into consideration before I gave him a response.
The database on the site is a mess, mainly due to being moved off an old host that was doing weird things to our data (sometimes normal behavior) by replacing apostrophe's with
I feel for these open source developers. Sometimes, hell most times bugs are user error, but the users pride is so great that it's just easier to "blame the tech" instead listening to the good advice the tech is trying to give them. (I can't recall how many times I told this guy to NOT use the paralell port zip drive because it would fuck up his win2k system)
The worst is when something is broken and you, the developer doesn't know what's going on, and the user is calling every 15 minutes suggesting what it will take to fix it, despite their suggestions having absolutely no bearing or effect on the problem itself. It's very distracting to have them calling every 15 minutes with their obvious inferior skills trying to tell you what to do. When I work, I don't tell the accountant how to count beans, I don't tell the janitor how to empty trash, it's not what I'm skilled at, so I just leave it up to them.
But why, why in gods name is it that in my career, there are so many accountant, janitors, plumbers that think they are expert tech people?
Maybe bugzilla should have some sort of quiz to make sure the person submitting the bug has the qualified intelligence to do so. Having to sort the real bugs from the fake one's i'm sure is time consuming.
Just my 2cents and a rant. Hopefully I wasn't too off topic with this one.
time to go change that sig.
Probably the most irritating phrase I see as an open source software person is "thanking you in advance for your prompt reply!!" That just makes me want to not respond to your email right away. I am a coordinator for a fairly large and active project. I can't always get to your email right away all the time.
But seriously, some of the staff at my work seem to think that CC'ing my boss on emails is the same as "you will do my bidding." :-)
All the comments I keep seeing are things aluding to programmers not actually doing anything about bug reporting.
This might be true of some companies, but as far as Open Source, I've not found it to be the case at all. I've reported bugs for kmail, gentoo, crystal space as well as many others. In every case, the bug was handled quickly. Sometimes with a fix or workaround the same day. For example I wanted to sent the subject header from emails to a speech synthasizer. And had problems. The lead programmer put the fix in immediatly, and sent me the source so I could do it myself. Not only that, but several other people sent me work arounds, to the point where I didn't need to bother with modifying the source. Open source is great in this respect.
Gentoo bugfixes are also very fast in this respect. Although like a doctor's office, the important cases get handled first. But I wouldn't want it any other way.
So I say, report the bugs. Do it as carefully as you can. (After all you and the programmer have the same goals, why not help each other out as much as possible).
OTOH, I've not had the same experience with closed source.... Sometimes the newsgroups have workarounds, but usually it's just people who have experience the same things. The lead programmer does not make an appearance ever.
Don't take it personally when your bugs are ignored. Fix them yourself if they're so tiny.
Hmmm. So, what you're saying is, they have no right to ignore you? To ignore their obligations to you?
If that's the case, then please consider this: if you're not paying them, and they haven't otherwise contracted with you to produce the feature/bug fix/etc. you desire, then how exactly are they obligated to you? They aren't forcing you to use the software; if you do, you (usually) don't have to pay for it. Better still, you are able (even welcome!) to grab the whole mess and start playing with it yourself. No need to be limited to "Hey, this could be done better!"; instead, you can show them how to do it better! Or not... except that even if you personally can't code it up, nothing prevents you from hiring someone else to do it.
I'm not a developer, at least I don't think of myself as one. I've spent the last year and a half programming in Perl and I'll be doing it for another year (I hope less), but I'm only doing it because it's a great opportunity for right now. I used to teach and, within the next year (I hope), I'll be writing and producing video full time.
I've reported a few bugs to AbiWord and one or two other places. Then I filed a bug report for Open Office -- files that were originally done in Word Perfect would import with margins intact into ALL word processors except Open Office. (Even if it was imported to Word, then imported to OOo, it still got messed up.) I submitted it as a bug report. Several months later I got an e-mail saying it wasn't a bug and that I sent it through the wrong channels. I brought it up in the OOo Users mailing list and a number of people connected with OOo and Star Office/Sun encouraged me to re-submit it. I followed up on the original "closed" report by saying it was a bug -- that ALL word processors could handle WP margins BUT OOo. This time the response was scathing. It was basically a programmer going into technical (I don't mean simple -- I mean long technical) explainations about why it wasn't a bug and why I was being a pest.
I know people are working hard on OOo to produce a solid filter for importing WP docs. I know, from the mailing list, that they want bug reports like this so they can improve the program.
Personally, I won't bother with any more bug reports. While this one would help me, I've got a work-around. I see no reason why I, as a user (and even though I am programming in Perl, I am not trained to be a programmer), should be jumped on by a programmer for not knowing "programmer things" and just trying to submit a bug report.
I don't know if bug reports help developers or users more, but I do know that I will be less likely to submit them in the future (that OOo bug was the last I ever submitted).
While I do think it is the responsibility of the user to RTFM, I think there's another side of the story -- those responding to bugs should make it as easy as possible for users to submit bugs (assuming the developers want to fix all their bugs).
My point? The user should use brains in submitting a bug report, but this sword has two edges and if the developers want bug reports, they need to make it easy and painless for users to report bugs.
There is some obligation. Sure, the developers don't have to fix the bugs you want fixed when you want them. But as an honest, well-meaning, well-researched bug submitter, there is an obligation for the developers to treat you reasonably.
To me, treating bug submitters reasonbly involves the following three things
1) Assume that the bug submitter isn't making the problem up. They may have misidentified it, or made a small error in description, etc. but they aren't inventing it out of whole cloth. If you follow this assumption up with a read of well-researched and documented bug description information, then you should assume the problem is likely correctly identified, and treat it as such.
2) "Works 4 ME!!" is not a problem resolution. It is a reasonable explanation of why a problem isn't going to be fixed too quickly: hard to troubleshoot what you have to imagine. It isn't proof the bug doesn't work.
3) If the truth is that it's low priority, that's fine, but don't go to a lot of effort to discredit the submitter/problem to justify your low priority classification. That's rude and a waste of time.
So it cuts both ways. Developers who can't give basic respect to bug submissions aren't going to get any value out of them, and there is an obligation to provide this basic respect. The bug submitters don't write them up just to waste their own time.
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Secondarily, if the bug is marked "INVALID", this means it's probably invalid. But the developer can be wrong. Through the last several software houses I've worked out, I've seen rampant miscategorization and misclassification of bugs by lazy developers. I think pointing out genuine errors and/or lies is acceptable and helpful, and helps avoid data corruption of the defect tracking system. That said, for this to have any value it has to be reasonably applied, and with tact.
-josh
I hope I was unlucky.
Hit a problem with the mail client - I wanted to be able to delete mouse selected text from a Usenet post that I was replying to.
Logged on to Mozilla
got an account
read the guidelines
searched for my problem
filled in bug report
(total elapsed time something like 20 minutes by now)
Smartass developer in USA posts comment that implies that I work for Microsoft and that I am wrong (ie that you should not be able to edit Usenet posts when replying to them). Bug report closed.
Outcome: Mozilla will not be getting any more bug reports from me.
Despite the problems associated with getting advanced users to patrol newbie message boards and find such reports and take the time to reproduce and report the bug, newbies are invaluble (as is being stated elsewhere in this thread) in reporting true bugs. Just because the programmer or QC person hasn't tried something in testing doesn't mean the newbie, fresh off of handholding by AOL, won't be able to crash it.