7 ms·

I understand when writing paid software with support expectations/contracts, sometimes you have to engage with the teeth-pulling exercise that is “does not work

I understand when writing paid software with support expectations/contracts, sometimes you have to engage with the teeth-pulling exercise that is “does not work”. But why do you in FOSS? Can’t you just close the ticket and say “not descriptive enough” and move on?

StavrosK 6y ago
You can and I regularly close tickets for not following the template that says at the very top "tickets not following this template will be closed with no reply". It's even better if you can get a bot to automatically reply and close it.
- Tehnix 6y ago
  I was thinking about how one could automate this when reading. Not a foolproof way, but add a string in your Issue Templates that is required to be there, e.g. . If this is not present in the issue, the GitHub action just closes the issue with a message to please fill in the template if they wish to create an issue. Doesn't catch nearly everything, but should get some and it's easy to set up. Could be interesting to go further with the idea and maybe check if each section contains text or something like this, hmm...
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    I've seen this in repos, I'm pretty sure there are bots who implement it. I'd guess it catches more than 90% of cases, especially if you put the string at the bottom of the template.
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    Another, somewhat more underhanded trick: add a string that is required to not be there, e.g. "Please remove this line entirely.", halfway through the template, and mention it nowhere else.
oefrha 6y ago
You can. You can do anything, really, including not reading issue reports at all. But you set out to be helpful anyway, so it’s about finding a cutoff where you don’t want to help anymore. As I said, it’s simply harder than ignoring assholes. (Plus you may get a bad rep.)
hombre_fatal 6y ago
To do that, you need a healthy brutal self-respecting trait that I think most of us admire. The rest of us feel bad doing that, especially towards someone trying to use something we built ourselves that holds some measure of our own pride or even self-worth, it feels closer to obligation. So we waste our time trying to help the characters that deserve our help the least, and we learn to develop a resentful version of that trait over a period of decades.
- proactivesvcs 6y ago
  The Syncthing project will often apply this trait and you're right - it's admirable as well as pragmatic.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Sounds like a good way for someone without coding skills to help a project, bug/message triage. But then, a good bug-reporting system should be able to do such filtering? I'm wondering if detecting abusive communications is/could be part of it, bit of ML seems like it would fit, even just some Bayesian filtering might do. One could also train an NN to recognise images of the app (or simpler: OCR|grep) and require a screenshot with any submission. But I guess automated triage mightn't be the best route. It seems very much a delicately balanced people problem.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  It's a skill probably worth practicing.
- matz1 6y ago
  Like anything else, the more you do it the easier it gets. Its not going to be instant but you'll get used to it.
- kelnos 6y ago
  I don't think you even need to be that brutal. Just have a file on your hard drive with a canned response that instructs the reporter that they need to provide more information, and how to provide it. Every time you run into a weak bug report, copy-paste that response into the issue comments. If the extra info gets provided, great, now it's a useful bug report. If not, you can close the issue, and not feel anywhere near as bad about doing so.
bxnkL 6y ago
Depends on the project. If it is governed by bureaucrats and you do that too often, you'll be accused of "not being inclusive". The modern version of "Boxer the work horse should work harder".
teekert 6y ago
Honestly sometimes the amount of things that you need to fill out just makes me use other software. I.e. kmail would never remember that I want my email threads expanded (this example is not real, the kmail devs were very helpful with minimal info in this case). Does this really require I hunt down all this info from all around the place? Sometimes I don't even know where to get the info. What helps immensely (and I saw this in the Geyser MC project), the software can produce a snippet with all info the devs want with one command, and it even exports to pastebin taking out sensitive info. If you paste such a link in their Discord it even makes an overview with syntax highlighting in the chat. That really helps a lot on my (bug reporter) side. And thus on the dev side.
- oefrha 6y ago
  If you can’t be bothered to copy a few version numbers when trying to get free support, kindly “use other software”. People providing free support usually don’t give a damn about your “taking your business elsewhere”. Moreover, - People omit things they think are irrelevant, when they are. - I print all the relevant details when --debug is on, so people just need to copy that. Some people refuse to run that and insist on submitting “does not work”.
  - teekert 6y ago
    I understand the -1, but you have to understand that to a user the choice is sometimes between: 1. Create crappy bug report and move on quickly to get things done or: 2. Do not create a bug report and move on immediately, to get things done I try to file whenever I can but when it's getting late and I want to go to bed I choose option 1 sometimes. Maybe I should choose option 2? For example, take the Nextcloud bug filing template on GitHub [0]. It's quite a long read but sure, worth the effort for free software I agree (Nextcloud is my favorite project, my life is in there, on my server)! However, I may not know exactly where these things are: ``` #### Web server error log <details> <summary>Web server error log</summary> ``` Insert your webserver log here ``` </details> #### Nextcloud log (data/nextcloud.log) <details> <summary>Nextcloud log</summary> ``` Insert your Nextcloud log here ``` </details> #### Browser log <details> <summary>Browser log</summary> ``` Insert your browser log here, this could for example include: a) The javascript console log b) The network log c) ... ``` They also want config.php, contents of `sudo -u www-data php occ app:list`, ask you to do this: Login as admin user into your Nextcloud and access http://example.com/index.php/settings/integrity/failed Also all versions: ### Server configuration \*Operating system:\* \*Web server:\* \*Database:\* \*PHP version:\* \*Nextcloud version:\* (see Nextcloud admin page) \*Updated from an older Nextcloud/ownCloud or fresh install:\* Moreover, I'm quite afraid to put my domain names or even more sensitive info onto a public website if I just copy and paste. All I'm saying is that a big button that generates everything a dev needs with sensitive stuff redacted (which should be doable here and yes maybe I should make a PR for that) will make the experience a lot nicer for the reporter and the dev. As said, the Geyser MC project [1] can do exactly this and to me it is a game changer, the whole process was fast and pleasant and it was easy to test the automated builds they made in the branch based on my issue and report back in context on GitHub. Pasting the JSON their report feature generates into their Discord channel together with your question and their ability to just !docs/something point you to relevant docs with a small command feels like magic. I found the whole process inspirational. I love all FOSS devs. You are my heroes. [0]: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/new?assignees=&labels=bug%2C+0.+Needs+triage&template=Bug_report.md https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/new?assignees=&la... [1] https://github.com/GeyserMC/Geyser https://github.com/GeyserMC/Geyser
LoSboccacc 6y ago
this is extremely frustrating for the users. there's a game I used to play fairly often before updates simply broke it. like mission items were replaced with random fires floating in water. many users with the same issue reported it, and some like me even provided a save (which was never even downloaded) all such tickets were closed with "cannot reproduce" I'm not (their) tester, I don't have time to fully reproduce issues step by step, and I don't have access to a debug build anyway to figure out the bug trigger condition "does not work" is the best I can say here.
- joncampbelldev 6y ago
  Was the game free? And did the people working on the game contribute a lot of their time to it for free? If not then I can see the reason for your frustration, however it is not the same as free software being worked on (at least partly) by volunteers receiving the same lack of effort (or in signal's case nastiness) in bug submissions.
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    paid

StavrosK 6y ago

You can and I regularly close tickets for not following the template that says at the very top "tickets not following this template will be closed with no reply". It's even better if you can get a bot to automatically reply and close it.

Tehnix 6y ago
I was thinking about how one could automate this when reading. Not a foolproof way, but add a string in your Issue Templates that is required to be there, e.g. . If this is not present in the issue, the GitHub action just closes the issue with a message to please fill in the template if they wish to create an issue. Doesn't catch nearly everything, but should get some and it's easy to set up. Could be interesting to go further with the idea and maybe check if each section contains text or something like this, hmm...
- StavrosK 6y ago
  I've seen this in repos, I'm pretty sure there are bots who implement it. I'd guess it catches more than 90% of cases, especially if you put the string at the bottom of the template.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  Another, somewhat more underhanded trick: add a string that is required to not be there, e.g. "Please remove this line entirely.", halfway through the template, and mention it nowhere else.

oefrha 6y ago

You can. You can do anything, really, including not reading issue reports at all. But you set out to be helpful anyway, so it’s about finding a cutoff where you don’t want to help anymore. As I said, it’s simply harder than ignoring assholes. (Plus you may get a bad rep.)

hombre_fatal 6y ago

To do that, you need a healthy brutal self-respecting trait that I think most of us admire. The rest of us feel bad doing that, especially towards someone trying to use something we built ourselves that holds some measure of our own pride or even self-worth, it feels closer to obligation. So we waste our time trying to help the characters that deserve our help the least, and we learn to develop a resentful version of that trait over a period of decades.

proactivesvcs 6y ago
The Syncthing project will often apply this trait and you're right - it's admirable as well as pragmatic.
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
Sounds like a good way for someone without coding skills to help a project, bug/message triage. But then, a good bug-reporting system should be able to do such filtering? I'm wondering if detecting abusive communications is/could be part of it, bit of ML seems like it would fit, even just some Bayesian filtering might do. One could also train an NN to recognise images of the app (or simpler: OCR|grep) and require a screenshot with any submission. But I guess automated triage mightn't be the best route. It seems very much a delicately balanced people problem.
madeofpalk 6y ago
It's a skill probably worth practicing.
matz1 6y ago
Like anything else, the more you do it the easier it gets. Its not going to be instant but you'll get used to it.
kelnos 6y ago
I don't think you even need to be that brutal. Just have a file on your hard drive with a canned response that instructs the reporter that they need to provide more information, and how to provide it. Every time you run into a weak bug report, copy-paste that response into the issue comments. If the extra info gets provided, great, now it's a useful bug report. If not, you can close the issue, and not feel anywhere near as bad about doing so.

bxnkL 6y ago

Depends on the project. If it is governed by bureaucrats and you do that too often, you'll be accused of "not being inclusive". The modern version of "Boxer the work horse should work harder".

teekert 6y ago

Honestly sometimes the amount of things that you need to fill out just makes me use other software. I.e. kmail would never remember that I want my email threads expanded (this example is not real, the kmail devs were very helpful with minimal info in this case). Does this really require I hunt down all this info from all around the place? Sometimes I don't even know where to get the info. What helps immensely (and I saw this in the Geyser MC project), the software can produce a snippet with all info the devs want with one command, and it even exports to pastebin taking out sensitive info. If you paste such a link in their Discord it even makes an overview with syntax highlighting in the chat. That really helps a lot on my (bug reporter) side. And thus on the dev side.

oefrha 6y ago
If you can’t be bothered to copy a few version numbers when trying to get free support, kindly “use other software”. People providing free support usually don’t give a damn about your “taking your business elsewhere”. Moreover, - People omit things they think are irrelevant, when they are. - I print all the relevant details when --debug is on, so people just need to copy that. Some people refuse to run that and insist on submitting “does not work”.
- teekert 6y ago
  I understand the -1, but you have to understand that to a user the choice is sometimes between: 1. Create crappy bug report and move on quickly to get things done or: 2. Do not create a bug report and move on immediately, to get things done I try to file whenever I can but when it's getting late and I want to go to bed I choose option 1 sometimes. Maybe I should choose option 2? For example, take the Nextcloud bug filing template on GitHub [0]. It's quite a long read but sure, worth the effort for free software I agree (Nextcloud is my favorite project, my life is in there, on my server)! However, I may not know exactly where these things are: ``` #### Web server error log <details> <summary>Web server error log</summary> ``` Insert your webserver log here ``` </details> #### Nextcloud log (data/nextcloud.log) <details> <summary>Nextcloud log</summary> ``` Insert your Nextcloud log here ``` </details> #### Browser log <details> <summary>Browser log</summary> ``` Insert your browser log here, this could for example include: a) The javascript console log b) The network log c) ... ``` They also want config.php, contents of `sudo -u www-data php occ app:list`, ask you to do this: Login as admin user into your Nextcloud and access http://example.com/index.php/settings/integrity/failed Also all versions: ### Server configuration \*Operating system:\* \*Web server:\* \*Database:\* \*PHP version:\* \*Nextcloud version:\* (see Nextcloud admin page) \*Updated from an older Nextcloud/ownCloud or fresh install:\* Moreover, I'm quite afraid to put my domain names or even more sensitive info onto a public website if I just copy and paste. All I'm saying is that a big button that generates everything a dev needs with sensitive stuff redacted (which should be doable here and yes maybe I should make a PR for that) will make the experience a lot nicer for the reporter and the dev. As said, the Geyser MC project [1] can do exactly this and to me it is a game changer, the whole process was fast and pleasant and it was easy to test the automated builds they made in the branch based on my issue and report back in context on GitHub. Pasting the JSON their report feature generates into their Discord channel together with your question and their ability to just !docs/something point you to relevant docs with a small command feels like magic. I found the whole process inspirational. I love all FOSS devs. You are my heroes. [0]: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/new?assignees=&labels=bug%2C+0.+Needs+triage&template=Bug_report.md https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/new?assignees=&la... [1] https://github.com/GeyserMC/Geyser https://github.com/GeyserMC/Geyser

LoSboccacc 6y ago

this is extremely frustrating for the users. there's a game I used to play fairly often before updates simply broke it. like mission items were replaced with random fires floating in water. many users with the same issue reported it, and some like me even provided a save (which was never even downloaded) all such tickets were closed with "cannot reproduce" I'm not (their) tester, I don't have time to fully reproduce issues step by step, and I don't have access to a debug build anyway to figure out the bug trigger condition "does not work" is the best I can say here.

joncampbelldev 6y ago
Was the game free? And did the people working on the game contribute a lot of their time to it for free? If not then I can see the reason for your frustration, however it is not the same as free software being worked on (at least partly) by volunteers receiving the same lack of effort (or in signal's case nastiness) in bug submissions.
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  paid