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Comment by Ansil849 | Hacker News Reader

> Letters, phone calls, and, where appropriate, surgery appointments are perfectly adequate for people who genuinely need my help

The insinuation that just because someone may not want to use a particular communication channel (or conversely, may need to use a particular channel), that they then are not genuine in their request for help is disingenuous and self-serving. Someone may genuinely need help and may likewise genuinely want to use email because they do not have ready access to a phone, or find it vastly more inconvenient, and need help in a manner faster than mail or setting up a surgery appointment affords.

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The same could be said, in a domain more familiar to HNers, of bug reports.

If you don't take bug reports as tweets, or in e-mails, but insist that 1) they go into a bug tracker, and 2) that they evidence some care (such as, instead of saying, 'X is broken', include a list of steps to reproduce, and an expected outcome) then, well, you must be self serving, and feel that these bugs are not genuine or important.

But, you'll also have a greater capacity to actually deal with the requests where someone made the effort to report a bug in a useful fashion.

MPs are supposed to serve all their consistuents, though. Open source maintainers' duty to their users is more controversial; but I think most people would agree it's not as strong as an MP's.

> then, well, you must be self serving, and feel that these bugs are not genuine or important.

It's harder to keep track of bugs that aren't on a bugtracker (hence the name) if you don't have time to fix them right now.

I regularly fix easy bugs submitted to me on IRC, but if I can't do it right now, then I require the user to open an issue on my bugtracker or else I'll forget it and fix one of the other 216 bugs on my bugtracker instead.

> MPs are supposed to serve all their consistuents, though

Yes, and that responsibility predates computers. So let’s not pretend that they only became capable of doing this effectively After Twitter was developed, just because you and others don’t want to bother with sending a letter.

This is kind of like the idea that the poor person who gave their last $10 is doing more than the rich person giving $10k/month sustainably.

it's ethics vs being _effective_ in the practical reality we live in.

OMG this! We have this over engineered issue tracking system with incredibly detailed information fields. In my opinion it has failed spectacularly because most people avoid it with a vengeance, and those who try to use it gets older much faster then the rest of us.

You missed out "create an account in the bug tracker".

That right there is the number one thing that might stop me from REPORTING a bug.

I also am NOT going to sign up to become a full developer just to submit a patch. Don't make me signing some CLA or other thing. Take my clear note saying the patch is submitted as (your choice of) "Too obvious to copyright", Public Domain or CC0 or some other acceptable very permissive thing.

I hate creating new accounts as much as the next person (maybe more), but if you can't be bothered with that much work why should I be bothered with fixing the bug? I definitely prefer bug reports in the bug tracker, even though I will still respond to those that have been emailed to me.

I'm with you generally, but this...

> if you can't be bothered with that much work why should I be bothered with fixing the bug?

comes off a bit weird. I don't fix bugs as a favor to any individual. I fix bugs because I want the product to be as good as it can be.

In my own projects, when people report bugs to me though methods other than the bug tracker, I just file the bug in the tracker myself so I don't forget.

I agree with you; I'm the same way about bugs in my products. Having said that, a bit more time/effort put into a bug report can save quite a bit of time for me in fixing this and increase the chance of success.

I report bugs as a favor to the developer. Most of the time I never plan to use the fixed software anyway.

Perhaps he should publish his cell phone so he can get incoming text messages from all of us? Or maybe he just needs a FB live account going 24/7 so we can quickly voice or opinion and get a direct response?

This policy of his is so mundane and acceptable, I'm flabbergasted that anyone is pushing back.

It's even harder to argue against when you see that he's been an MP since '97 and keeps getting elected!

Firstly, I find the policy of only accepting correspondence by phone, letter or appointment perfectly reasonable. However...

> he's been an MP since '97 and keeps getting elected!

In the UK, this usually says more about the demographics of the seat than the quality of the MP.

OTOH, email is vastly easier to automate and swamp your resources than phone calls, and so forth.

I also don't find the argument that people can't find a phone to call, but can email to hold much water. My bank is allowed to refuse to take $1k in pennies, there are often good reasons for limitations due to abuse.

It's wrong to suggest that all email correspondence is not genuine, but it's a fair bet that the majority of it is.

I don't think a constituency office should generate arbitrary hoops to make communication harder, but on the other hand they shouldn't have to do a lot of extra filtering work just for your convenience.

Ah yes the ole edge case where you have access to a computer and the internet but are unable to find access to a phone.

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