The changing nature of bug reports

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 04:10:50PM +0100, Henrik Nilsen Omma wrote:
> When you experience a crash in Windows, which is what most new users 
> will be used to, a dialog also pops up and you are given the choice of 
> reporting the crash or not. If you accept  some logs are uploaded and 
> you're done. In our case you are taken to a page on launchpad where you 
> first have to register by giving your email address and then write a 
> description of what happened. Some users may give up at that point, 
> which means we are loosing reports.

In the long term, we will want for crash reports to be treated differently
than normal bug reports.  Specifically, there should be an option to submit
the crash report without context and without cluttering the bug tracking
system with irrelevant reports in the process.

> Others will continue without quite knowing how it works.

This is an area where we could do better for all types of reports.  At
least:

- Users should be better informed about the implied contract of filing a bug
  report in an open source environment

- A facility should be provided for reporting problems which does not imply
  this contract (e.g., support rather than bugs)

> I think this proposed feature: 
> https://launchpad.net/products/malone/+bug/43893 will probably help, 
> where we can give specific instructions about how to file a good bug for 
> a given package. So we can explain (with screenshots!) how to upload 
> /var/log/foo right from the start, saving the round trips.

We should use apport to stamp out all instances of this particular problem,
by including relevant information which can be collected without user
intervention.

However, this feature would still be very useful in a variety of
circumstances.

> I think we should go further than that too though. If the user reporting 
> the bug has no Launchpad account arrives at a new bug page for a 
> product, she should be presented with two choices: "Take my automated 
> report and leave me alone." or "Yes, I want to be involved in following 
> this up further."

Perhaps meanwhile, apport (which is easier to change than Launchpad) could
warn the user that if they proceed, they are expected to participate beyond
simply submitting a report.

-- 
 - mdz