Don’t just hate, write bug reports | Hacker News Reader

Don’t just hate, write bug reports

bitboxer.de

20 pointsbitboxer17 comments

My problem: submitting bug reports is sometimes hard.

Every so often, I come across a bug with one of the apps I use on my Ubuntu machine - be it Chrome, Firefox, Amarok, or something else. I go through the process of figuring out exactly what triggers the bug, and sometimes even try out gdb on the app to see what's going on... then I go to the bug reporting page, realize I need to make some Launchpad account or some hassle like that, and decide that I'm too lazy to report it. (And every piece of software uses a separate bug tracker, so you need a separate account for each bug that you want to report!)

Not very accessible to the casual user...

(At least, this has been my experience.)

I have also experienced several times that developers have been quite hostile towards bug reports. Even bug reports that I, as a developer, would be quite happy to receive myself. That kind of attitude means you are less inclined to try and help out again, and will most likely dump the product first chance you get.

Three of the last four bug reports that I've written have been totally ignored. Two were on a google group, so it's possible (but unlikely) that they just drifted off the front page before anyone qualified saw them. The other is just sitting in the issue tracker getting no attention.

I spent a good chunk of time in each case trying to figure out what was causing the problem, and I'm definitely less inclined to go back to those projects now.

Same thing. I found a bug in a drupal module. Even went so far as to develop a patch to correct the problem. The module owners response? He complained about my choice of variable names.

I feel your pain. But you can easily twitter "chrome crashes when opening example.com". This would be a greater help to everyone than simply writing "chrome crashes #fail".

Twitter is not exactly a forum for well-considered insightful comments. A "fail" twitter is not that significant - more on the order of a wtf exclamation, which I emit many times when trying any new program.

That said, as a guy that likes to get bug reports (better than NOT getting them and really failing), it helps to have ANY details, not "it doesn't work" but "on the Score page, hitting Profile does nothing" kind of thing.

This is why I only write open-source apps -- then I can reply "but it didn't annoy you enough to send me a patch? #fail".

Sorry, but this is not a good attitude. Be friendly to the people who use your software. Not all of them are able to write a patch for a bug.

Boths sides should be respectful and nice to each other.

Saying: write a patch would translate to "go fuck yourselfs" for most of the users.

Not all of them are able to write a patch for a bug.

Then what use are they to me? "Hi, I took your stuff for free, but I hate it, and I have no ability to improve it." OK, you mean nothing to me.

If you don't want to have users, why open source it in the first place? Just keep it on your hard disk and stop disappointing guys who think you give a fuck about people that want to use your stuff.

No.

I certainly hope this wasn't the author's software that was being tweeted about. Because if so, this is about the worst possible way to handle it. In fact, this is a really good opportunity to make things better.

If I ever make an angry tweet about something, mediocre companies ignore me or never find it. Good companies will say "We're sorry you're having problems. What can we do to help?" I'm probably happier with those companies than if I hadn't tweeted about them angrily. What does it look like when a customer (who may genuinely have a valid complaint that won't fit in 140 characters) is obviously angry and the person who publishes the software's only response is an angry blog post? And no, issues involving Michael Arrington don't count. That's a special case. :-)

Whenever someone tweets about my apps, I reply them on twitter. Boths sides need to respect each other and listen to each other. Even the "XXX is fuck" will be answered by me. But why don't post something more constructive? Something that explains what went wrong. That's my main issue here.

Because they're frustrated and venting. Just like you were doing when you wrote this post. Don't take it personally. That only makes the situation worse. :-)

How do you avoid taking it personally? I have a really hard time with it.

It's just not going to work in competitive environments with no immidiate benifit for the user.

Great point. I think I, myself am guilty of mentioning some #fail in my twitter feed which was probably better served as a bug report.

But when you write something in your twitter feed then it's usually not something you want to follow through on and if you actually do want a solution, I think most people would actually go the extra mile and ask at a forum or file a bug report.

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