[LEDE-DEV] On the proposed Mantis and maximizing bug usefulness

[Ben Greear]

On 05/08/2016 06:35 PM, Daniel Dickinson wrote:
> On 16-05-08 09:24 PM, Ben Greear wrote:
>>
>>> 1) I like the suggestion of one the of list members made of having
>>> something on the device that you clicked on and it prefilled as much as
>>> possible of the relevant information (like arch, model, etc) into the
>>> bug report (for example a luci screen that hooked into Mantis API (I
>>> assume they have one)) and required such fields are guaranteed to be
>>> required, and before submitting to the bug tracker, force the user to at
>>> least claim that the information genuinely met the guidelines.  I'd be
>>> happy to whip up something like this, that fit what you wanted.
>>
>> Don't make it required, it is possible a user cannot actually provide
>> the information for whatever reason and otherwise has a perfectly fine
>> bug report.
>
> That's what the 'force the use the user to claim' bit is about -
> basically the only things that should be in the required things that are
> *guaranteed* to be available / applicable (like what device is this
> occurring on), and everything should be optional but users should be
> required to actually think about whether their bug report is actually
> useful to volunteer developers, or is just going to waste time and
> resources).
>
>> Make it suggested, and make it easy to provide, and users will likely
>> do the right thing most of the time.
>
> I think if you ensure users actually read WHY they're being asked for
> what they are, and are reminded of the fact that a useless bug report
> hurts rather than helps, then I'd agree they will, but in my experience
> without that kind of reminder, there is a significantly detrimental
> tendency to be lazy and not do the right thing.

So, I'm all for good bug reports and tools/scripts to make it easy
to generate and report them.

But, even if the bug report is simply:

"I upgraded the blue thing on my desk today and now it sucks
but I don't really know why."

It may still be useful:  If you see 100 other of those bugs around the
same time, you know there is probably some issue, and you can start paying
more attention and/or start looking harder for concrete bugs around
that timeframe.

If it happens once, simply ignore it.

Someone who is triaging the bugs could notice this sort of thing: They could open
a meta-bug, with more useful summary information, and make the other mostly useless
bugs hidden.

Thanks,
Ben

-- 
Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com