My life involves hooking up various bits of image processing software into a semi-unbroken workflow that can scale to massive (10^5 pixels edge length) images. So I get lots of error messages at different times.
I will try to remember this option the next time I get bitten; but, my usual approach is to type a unique chunk of the error message into Google.
This works pretty well.
The value that others could get out of me having solved this error is, unfortunately not something I care that much about right now.
However, I work on my own, most of the time. I could see this service being taken up in cases where a group manager can dictate, or encourage, his team to use the service, in the name of the greater good.
Other things I noticed doing a little bit of clicking around at http://bug.gd:
The big "bug.gd" logo is a link. Curious, I clicked it. It caused http://bug.gd to reload. That's useless.
The "solved bugs" link should be more prominent, so people can see exactly what you mean by error message. You take it for granted, but it took me a little while to understand what your site was getting at. A screenshot of an error message, with a link to the solution, wouldn't hurt either.
The "solved bugs" page is pretty silly. A long list of uncategorized bugs with solutions. At the bottom, a list of links to at least 1319 pages of additional solutions. Why would I ever click on one of these pages? The chances that it has something interesting to me approaches zero.
A search field at the top of the "solved bugs" page would be immediately useful (without me having to sign up, etc.). Categorized or tagged solutions would also be useful.
The Solved Bugs page does give an example of errors being solved, but it's actually primarily there to ensure that bugs people solve also get indexed by Google and other search engines. The importance of that is you can be sure your solution is accessible throughout and not just to users of our site-- it has real value for the world at large.
Thanks again for the rest of your feedback-- I'll mull that over and see what we can do.
Hey guys, we'd love feedback on our relaunch. Any thoughts you have are encouraged-- we've worked very hard on this.
(If for some reason this submission isn't appropriate for hn.yc, please let me know what we can do to change that-- our post earlier got flagged somehow. Apologies in advance.)
I will try to remember this option the next time I get bitten; but, my usual approach is to type a unique chunk of the error message into Google.
This works pretty well.
The value that others could get out of me having solved this error is, unfortunately not something I care that much about right now.
However, I work on my own, most of the time. I could see this service being taken up in cases where a group manager can dictate, or encourage, his team to use the service, in the name of the greater good.
Other things I noticed doing a little bit of clicking around at http://bug.gd:
The big "bug.gd" logo is a link. Curious, I clicked it. It caused http://bug.gd to reload. That's useless.
The "solved bugs" link should be more prominent, so people can see exactly what you mean by error message. You take it for granted, but it took me a little while to understand what your site was getting at. A screenshot of an error message, with a link to the solution, wouldn't hurt either.
The "solved bugs" page is pretty silly. A long list of uncategorized bugs with solutions. At the bottom, a list of links to at least 1319 pages of additional solutions. Why would I ever click on one of these pages? The chances that it has something interesting to me approaches zero.
A search field at the top of the "solved bugs" page would be immediately useful (without me having to sign up, etc.). Categorized or tagged solutions would also be useful.
HTH and good luck.