GNOME Bug buddy (was: Being nice to testers ...)

[Daniel Robitaille]

> The report should probably be tagged that it didn't come from a human and
> used for trend recording rather than immediate processing if developers are
> worried that the system is going to get overwhelmed.
>
> The bug buddy should only ask two questions;  (1) What was the last thing
> you remember trying to do before the program crashed, and (2) your email
> address---which should be cached and remembered after the first submission.
> Anything else should be option and minimal hassle to the user.

I don't use KDE that often, but yesterday I did crash amarok on a
Mandriva 2006 system.   After the crash, the only thing I got was a
kmail compose window, with the backtrace inserted in the body, some
sort of generic subject line, and the window was already addressed to
a  backtrace mailing list somewhere.  And there was a little comment
in the email to-be-send telling me that I can enter here some text to
describe what just happened before sending it to the developers.

So at that point the user is one mouse click away to send a generic
bug report with a backtrace, and a little bit of typing + one click
away to send a more personalized one.  I don't know how useful it is
for the developers, but from an user point of view, it was
user-friendly, and dead easy to do and to understand exactly what's
going on and what is being sent and to where.

--
Daniel Robitaille