
I Will File Bugs for You (2014) - luu
https://www.owlfolio.org/htmletc/i-will-file-bugs-for-you/
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gfosco
He's not only filing the bug, but also attempting to reproduce it. In the vein
of doing things that don't scale, this idea is a clear winner.

It does seem like a valuable service: The project would get a
verified/reproduced bug report from a known entity, and the reporter would get
their issue addressed just by sending an email.

Under/over on how long before he can't offer this for free?

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knappe
It was first posted on `14 August 2014`. So my guess is no one has really
taken him up on the offer.

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Trufa
Well, it's getting a lot of attention now.

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robbrown451
I like this. Less so for his actual offer, but more because he is calling
attention to how hard it is to do this for people who don't want to deal with
a "bug tracking system... optimized for people who spend all day every day
working with it".

It would be nice if there was a single, easy to use site for mere mortals to
enter bug reports (and others can comment on them, vote on them, process them,
etc).....one sort of like Github or StackOverflow, where we all sort of agree
to use that site.

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Kalium
> It would be nice if there was a single, easy to use site for mere mortals to
> enter bug reports (and others can comment on them, vote on them, process
> them, etc).....one sort of like Github or StackOverflow, where we all sort
> of agree to use that site.

Where they exist, they promptly get overwhelmed by all kinds of stupid shit.
Then the devs have to filter through insane amounts of crap and sundry sorts
of spam for the few things that are actually useful bug reports. Google code
had this going on for a while, if memory serves.

With this in mind, the effort required to file a bug is not so much a bug as
it is a useful filter. Yes, it cuts down on the actual bugs filed, but it cuts
down far more on all the crap you don't want.

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jakobegger
In my experience the "stupid shit" and "crap you don't want" is often useful
feedback. At the very least, it tells you which parts of your app are most
confusing.

For example, if you get lots of complaints about something you consider
obvious, maybe you should reconsider what's obvious. Often minor changes like
improved docs or more googleable error messages can improve the experience for
many users. And you'll see if changes are effective as soon as a specific sort
of "crap" stops showing up in your bug reporting system.

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Hello71
Except when tons of emails come in that can't even coherently describe the
part of the program that doesn't work or the approximate process they are
attempting.

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jakobegger
You can always ignore these incoherent emails. But if you put up some kind of
filter _before_ people can contact you, it won't be your decision which
feedback you ignore.

And, if you really try, you can often extract valuable feedback even from what
seems to be incoherent babble at first.

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Kalium
You can, but sorting through them has costs measured in time. Filtering
through dozens of drug report and smug reports for a useful bug report is not
instantaneous.

When your entire project is just you in your spare time or maybe a handful of
volunteers, that filter is the difference between support being helpful and
support being a useless hellhole. And believe me, when the vast majority of
support requests are useless crap, you lose motivation to care about those
people with truly impressive speed.

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jordigh
Y'know what, I'll extend the same offer. I'll find any free software project
and file a bug. I do it enough for myself, I can do it for someone else.

jordigh@octave.org

Tell me which bug to file.

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bcook
I have always been ashamed that I rarely consider reporting a bug. Though,
most of the time I assume that the "bug" is caused by my ignorance.

I think this man's efforts should be applauded. :)

Good luck!

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quadrature
I know you're probably refering to open source projects, but a lot of software
doesn't even have ways to report bugs to send feedback.

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claudius
Isn’t it usually considered your distribution’s responsibility to handle that?
They may have done god-knows-what to the software, so the bug might not even
appear in the upstream release.

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steveklabnik
In 2011 I made a similar offer, to write patches for any documentation
improvements to Ruby: [http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2011-08-22-im-
making-it-d...](http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2011-08-22-im-making-it-
dead-simple-to-contribute-to-ruby-s-documentation)

I think overall, about a dozen people took me up on it over the years.

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zem
nice. however a more scalable approach would be a metabug site where people
could post "it doesn't work" freeform text, and volunteers could accept a bug
and resolve it when they had refiled it with the correct project.

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ploxiln
uh, I think they made that, and called it StackOverflow

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mushly
You do know that's nowhere near being the purpose of StackOverflow, right?

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ploxiln
heh, yeah, was a snarky joke, and in hindsight not my best

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bastijn
Well, first to take the stackexchange and form BugOverflow wins :).

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sukilot
getsatisfaction.com

Launchpad.net

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zabcik
I bet this guy's going to get swamped in the next few hours.

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benburwell
Interesting idea, letting someone more familiar with the project make a bug
report. It's almost like crowdsourcing tech support.

I wrote about how open source project bug trackers aren't as inviting as they
might be a few months ago: [https://www.benburwell.com/posts/open-bug-
tracking-empowers-...](https://www.benburwell.com/posts/open-bug-tracking-
empowers-users/).

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Eridrus
I agree that JIRA is probably not what you want as your user-facing bug
tracker, but Bugzilla seems significantly less complicated, and the github
issue tracker is easier still (though I think it is over-simplified for a
user-facing bug tracker).

Someone above mentioned wanting free form bug trackers, but this runs into the
problem of bad bug reports. You want bug reports that you can reproduce, or at
least some artifacts such as crash dumps or stack traces that give you
something to analyze. Short of that you're left guessing about what the
problem is. Hence, bug trackers tend to ask people for more information up
front so that there is less back and forth.

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jeffdavis
Normally, I think of ways to _increase_ involvement with OSS communities.

He's helping people, and probably learning in the process, which is great. But
it would be even better if he could add a touch of "help people help
themselves"; otherwise I'm concerned that the OSS process will feel a little
more sterile.

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maxerickson
I think providing a lightweight action->result cycle is just as or more likely
to engage people as a process that requires a deeper involvement before there
is any chance of a result.

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MicroBerto
He _could_ get paid for doing this over at
[https://www.pay4bugs.com](https://www.pay4bugs.com)

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dukehoops
Maybe I am off, but that read almost like sarcasm (see reference to "copious
free time" in fine print).

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nanofortnight
The phrase "copious free time" is itself sarcastic, but it usually just
implies "please be patient" rather than "I won't do it".

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rasz_pl
article text is 190 pixels wide in 1600px wide browser window, maybe it should
file this bug for me too?

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rasz_pl
[http://i.imgur.com/0c1fGpR.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/0c1fGpR.jpg)

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bcook
Holy crap!

Do you really have ~100 browser tabs open?

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rasz_pl
Takes <2GB ram and doesnt cost a thing when starting up on SSD, so why not?
Better than bookmarks ;-)

On a serious note its the morning rush, goes down to ~30 by noon. I dont let
stuff control my timing (like TV used to), instead I open everything in the
background and read/watch at my own pace through the day (between
coding/soldering).

