Frustrating experience reading docs trying to report a bug

[Jonathan Watt]

Greetings, Quality Team,

On https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs could you please, please link
the text "check Launchpad for any duplicates" to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ -
that would have saved me the very frustrating experience detailed below (for any
of you who care for the sad details).

For bonus points, could you also please consider adding that link to
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Launchpad

Best regards,
Jonathan

---

I've encountered a serious bug that has rendered my 20.04 machine unusable, and
I wanted to be a good community member and report it. As I assume is fairly
typical, I searched online and discovered:

  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Reading through that page, I read "check Launchpad for any duplicates".
Unfortunately that text is not linked to the place I should go to carry out that
search, so I have to figure that out.

First, I look back up the page for links to "Launchpad" since it sounds like
that's where I'm supposed to go. The first link is to:

  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Launchpad

I click on that, but the closest thing there to information on how to search for
duplicates is the link for "Want to report a bug in Ubuntu"...but that links
straight back to the page that I just came from...

The next link mentioning "Launchpad" on the original page is "create a Launchpad
account", so I click on that which takes me to:

  https://help.launchpad.net/YourAccount/NewAccount

I just wanted to search initially, so I clicked on "Report a bug on this site"
thinking it would take me to the bug database website, which becomes relevant
below (in retrospect, I realize this means "report a bug **WITH** this site" but
I unfortunately read it as "use this site to report a bug with Ubuntu"). It just
redirects me back to the same page, so I click on "account sign-up" in the first
paragraph which takes me to:

  https://login.launchpad.net/hEXdj3AZIcL9zrSr/+decide

I search my password manager to check if I have previously created an account.
To my surprise, it seems that at some point I have, so I enter my email address
and password. After a timeout, a hard refresh, and a reattempt, it logs me in
and automatically takes me to:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/canonical-identity-provider/+filebug

I read "Report a bug" on the screen, and it looks like I can search for a bug.
Okay, that wasn't the smoothest experience, but I seem to be in the right place.
I search a few times with various keywords, but since I get nothing that comes
close to matching my bug I click the button "No, I need to report a new bug".

On reading the page to report a bug, I read "This project is only for issues
with the Ubuntu One Single Sign-On service itself, not for bugs or problems with
Ubuntu or any software included or installed on an Ubuntu System."

Argh, so I'm in the wrong place. I go back to the original page and try a few
more things, search online, and eventually through a fluke realize that the bug
reporting page that I was on has "canonical-identity-provider" in the URL.
Being a bit technical I realize the significance of this (presumably many users
would not). Why have I been directed there (it's only during postmortem analysis
that i figured out this was due to me clicking "Report a bug on this site" as
described above)? I try stripping the URL back to just:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/

Finally I seem to be in the right place.

All in all, a very frustrating experience, especially piled on top of being in
the position that my Ubuntu computer is broken and I just want to get back to
figuring it out so I can get on with work.