"The system detected a problem, do you want to report it?" dialog

Robert Heller heller at deepsoft.com
Sat Aug 25 19:48:17 UTC 2018


At Sat, 25 Aug 2018 20:17:33 +0100 "Ubuntu user technical support,  not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> On 25/08/18 11:07, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> [...]
> > Auto-reports are bad. I'm not aware of many project that asks for
> > "auto-reports". AFAIK they are Ubuntu, Mozilla, bloated desktop
> > environments and perhaps a few other, 
> 
> In general, yes they're bad. But asking end-users for dev-style reports 
> is not going to get many responses.
> 
> > while IIRC Ubuntu is the only project that makes reporting bugs
> > manually hard, more or less impossible. It's complicated to report a
> > bug manually to the Ubuntu bug tracker.
> 
> I based my earlier comments on my last decade which has largely been 
> Ubuntu on the desktop, so I had assumed other system were equally 
> unusable. My apologies if I have done them an injustice.
> 
> > Ubuntu is the only FLOSS project I know, that makes manually reporting
> > bugs more or less impossible.
> 
> I gave up reporting bugs to bug-trackers long ago because they were 
> either ignored, or merged into another unrelated error by someone who 
> hadn't bothered to read what I wrote. Some of the bugs are still there 
> because the developers don't regard them as important, and some are 
> still being argued over twelve years later :-)
> 
> > If you know any other project where a user cannot simply create an
> > account, log in and easily report a bug manually, let me know.
> 
> First, when such an error occurs, the LAST thing the user wants to do is 
> go through the loop of creating an account and waiting for the email 
> confirmation, which may or may not arrive. Bug-reporters need to let 
> end-users use their Gmail or FB or other pseudo-identity QUICKLY.
> 
> Second, a detailed bug report usable by the developers is perhaps not 
> something an end user can write easily. It takes knowledge and 
> understanding of the terminology and awareness of the executing environment.

+1

*End Users* really should be reporting bugs to their "System Manager".  Or if 
they don't have such a thing, they probably should be finding a Guru to talk 
to first.

Maybe "End Users" would be better off reporting the bug "here" or someplace 
like "Ask Ubuntu". This would get the bug to someone with the understanding of 
the system to try to reproduce the problem and then that person could then 
file a bug report that would in fact be useful.

The auto-reporting thing can be problematical.

> 
> But bug-reporting IS a big problem, and I don't know if there is a 
> global solution.
> 
> ///Peter
> 
> 

-- 
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