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The thing I wonder about in instances like this is how many people ran into the problem and thought, "Huh, there must be some quirky rationale here, and it's ju

The thing I wonder about in instances like this is how many people ran into the problem and thought, "Huh, there must be some quirky rationale here, and it's just an idiosyncrasy I'll have to deal with", or, "Huh, that's definitely wrong... oh well".

aisofteng 9y ago
I can definitely say that I've been guilty of seeing a subtle but not deal breaking bug in third party open source software and then failing to file a report because there's just so much to do in a day that it's easy to forget. It's on all of us to be good open source citizens.
- ethbro 9y ago
  I think the counter point of this is being kind when people report bugs that aren't bugs. If users encounter a weird result, report it, and have someone call them an idiot because they misunderstood a nuance of the system... they're probably not going to take the time to report next time around. (And I get it, there's that common issue that people consistently misunderstand and you continually get reports about. But each one of those users might also be a user who finds a real bug next time.)
  - lomnakkus 9y ago
    I think your parenthetical probably explains the dismissive attitude many upstreams have, but I would argue that if so many people are (consistently) misunderstanding your software then there's probably a UI/UX/education problem that needs fixin'... (Not saying it's easy, but it's a sign...)
    - alkonaut 9y ago
      Someone said, somewhere: User files bug that isn't a bug: bad/rookie dev: omg dumb user good dev: closes bug issue, files new issue to fix docs.
deleted 9y ago
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13of40 9y ago
Years back, I spent some time doing QA for an operating system, and I noticed that there was a strong tendency in people to deny the possibility that the operating system had a bug when they noticed something wrong and instead put all their energy into fixing test automation, finding workarounds, etc. And a lot of these were people whose sole purpose at work was finding and reporting bugs in the OS.

aisofteng 9y ago

I can definitely say that I've been guilty of seeing a subtle but not deal breaking bug in third party open source software and then failing to file a report because there's just so much to do in a day that it's easy to forget. It's on all of us to be good open source citizens.

ethbro 9y ago
I think the counter point of this is being kind when people report bugs that aren't bugs. If users encounter a weird result, report it, and have someone call them an idiot because they misunderstood a nuance of the system... they're probably not going to take the time to report next time around. (And I get it, there's that common issue that people consistently misunderstand and you continually get reports about. But each one of those users might also be a user who finds a real bug next time.)
- lomnakkus 9y ago
  I think your parenthetical probably explains the dismissive attitude many upstreams have, but I would argue that if so many people are (consistently) misunderstanding your software then there's probably a UI/UX/education problem that needs fixin'... (Not saying it's easy, but it's a sign...)
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    Someone said, somewhere: User files bug that isn't a bug: bad/rookie dev: omg dumb user good dev: closes bug issue, files new issue to fix docs.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

13of40 9y ago

Years back, I spent some time doing QA for an operating system, and I noticed that there was a strong tendency in people to deny the possibility that the operating system had a bug when they noticed something wrong and instead put all their energy into fixing test automation, finding workarounds, etc. And a lot of these were people whose sole purpose at work was finding and reporting bugs in the OS.