4 ms·

I disagree. Bug trackers should be respectful, and users should know that they are just one user and be humble without demanding that things are fixed immediat

I disagree. Bug trackers should be respectful, and users should know that they are just one user and be humble without demanding that things are fixed immediately or otherwise showing anger/entitlement. That doesn't mean they should write prose in their reports. Bug reports should be precise and should make it obvious what's happening to allow them to be quickly triaged and understood. They should ideally be a bulleted list with configuration, what was done, what happened, and what the user expected to happen. Logs/screenshots/etc. can be attached as necessary. It is incredibly uncommon for anything else to be necessary - and I say this from more than a decade of experience in enterprise and end user-facing software that gets thousands of feedback/bug reports per day. As part of a triage team, I'm going through bug after bug after bug. I don't want to read paragraphs. I don't want to read your life story. I don't even really want to read your "thank you". I want to read exactly what is necessary to assign the bug to an owner and to understand its priority - no more, no less.

capableweb 6y ago
> and I say this from more than a decade of experience in enterprise and end user-facing software that gets thousands of feedback/bug reports per day > part of a triage team You have to realize your perspective is very different from the perspective of someone building small-scale open source software.
- Arainach 6y ago
  Building small scale open source software, my time is even MORE valuable since I'm not even being paid to read your prose.
  - kenny11 6y ago
    Perhaps adding some prose along the lines of "Thanks for spending your time on this, I really enjoy using it" to these bug reports is the payment.
  - altano 6y ago
    "All these 'thank you's and 'please's are annoyingly adding to the verbosity of the bug reports!" said no small-scale open source software maintainer, ever.
    - orangecat 6y ago
      I would absolutely say that if I were receiving several bug reports a day with paragraphs of fluff.
    - chungy 6y ago
      I would say that. I don't want to hear "thank you" -- I just want a clear bug report. "Thank you" often comes across as disgenuine, a plea to try to raise the priority of the bug. I don't really know if it effects me in a major way, but if it even effects me at all, it probably would make me less likely to want to fix a bug.
      - vcxy 6y ago
        Wow. I always say thank you and have never meant what you think, and it has never even crossed my mind that it could be read that way. I doubt it means what you think very often.
        austinjp 6y ago
        In a team I worked in many years ago, there was a general consensus that a manager saying "thanks" didn't come across well. It implied that the dev was doing a favour for that person and wanted to do so. Instead, they preferred something along the lines of "good work" or "great job" or similar. This indicated that the work was of value. This was in person and in a single company, so is a bit different from issues raised by a stranger over the internet in a bug tracker. Personally, if I don't know the person I say/write "thanks" because I mean it, especially if it's an open source project. People are wonderfully complex :)
    - lmm 6y ago
      Plenty do. I've even seen one include that in their email signature.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    Thank you's are literally the only form of payment small scale open source developers tend to get. If no one cares about your project or likes it or shows appreciation then why bother with it or at least why bother responding to issues?
scythe 6y ago
For some reason I always think of an episode from The Wire. Rawls is dressing down McNulty for his latest infraction and orders him to have a report to the deputy tomorrow morning, and the points should have "little dots next to them. The deputy likes dots." Since then I always separate and mark specific items in a report, usually with bullet points. It turns out pretty often, the deputy does, in fact, like dots. But it's also important to avoid duplication.
- anticristi 6y ago
  Figures, lot us figures I tend to fill my report with figures having self-contained captions. That is the only thing I expect a busy reader to read. The rest of the text is a note to self.
violiner 6y ago
> That doesn't mean they should write prose in their reports. I, too, would prefer bug reports written in verse.
- violiner 6y ago
  It won't do what I want when I click it, So now I will open a ticket. It should do the right thing And not be a pain, Would you please help me out now and fix it?
- dylan604 6y ago
  iambic pentameter or haiku? my automated bug report diagnostic tools only read prose written by the Bard, so if you choose the wrong meter, your bug gets tossed to the "won't fix" category
  - spicybright 6y ago
    I kind of want that to exist, actually
    - violiner 6y ago
      It would be sweet if you could configure the forms and meters that it would accept.
      - anticristi 6y ago
        I can already hear the next start-up pitch: "We use AI to convert inhuman proze into haikus. Our software improves customer service satisfaction by 30%."

capableweb 6y ago

> and I say this from more than a decade of experience in enterprise and end user-facing software that gets thousands of feedback/bug reports per day > part of a triage team You have to realize your perspective is very different from the perspective of someone building small-scale open source software.

Arainach 6y ago
Building small scale open source software, my time is even MORE valuable since I'm not even being paid to read your prose.
- kenny11 6y ago
  Perhaps adding some prose along the lines of "Thanks for spending your time on this, I really enjoy using it" to these bug reports is the payment.
- altano 6y ago
  "All these 'thank you's and 'please's are annoyingly adding to the verbosity of the bug reports!" said no small-scale open source software maintainer, ever.
  - orangecat 6y ago
    I would absolutely say that if I were receiving several bug reports a day with paragraphs of fluff.
  - chungy 6y ago
    I would say that. I don't want to hear "thank you" -- I just want a clear bug report. "Thank you" often comes across as disgenuine, a plea to try to raise the priority of the bug. I don't really know if it effects me in a major way, but if it even effects me at all, it probably would make me less likely to want to fix a bug.
    - vcxy 6y ago
      Wow. I always say thank you and have never meant what you think, and it has never even crossed my mind that it could be read that way. I doubt it means what you think very often.
      - austinjp 6y ago
        In a team I worked in many years ago, there was a general consensus that a manager saying "thanks" didn't come across well. It implied that the dev was doing a favour for that person and wanted to do so. Instead, they preferred something along the lines of "good work" or "great job" or similar. This indicated that the work was of value. This was in person and in a single company, so is a bit different from issues raised by a stranger over the internet in a bug tracker. Personally, if I don't know the person I say/write "thanks" because I mean it, especially if it's an open source project. People are wonderfully complex :)
  - lmm 6y ago
    Plenty do. I've even seen one include that in their email signature.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  Thank you's are literally the only form of payment small scale open source developers tend to get. If no one cares about your project or likes it or shows appreciation then why bother with it or at least why bother responding to issues?

scythe 6y ago

For some reason I always think of an episode from The Wire. Rawls is dressing down McNulty for his latest infraction and orders him to have a report to the deputy tomorrow morning, and the points should have "little dots next to them. The deputy likes dots." Since then I always separate and mark specific items in a report, usually with bullet points. It turns out pretty often, the deputy does, in fact, like dots. But it's also important to avoid duplication.

anticristi 6y ago
Figures, lot us figures I tend to fill my report with figures having self-contained captions. That is the only thing I expect a busy reader to read. The rest of the text is a note to self.

violiner 6y ago

> That doesn't mean they should write prose in their reports. I, too, would prefer bug reports written in verse.

violiner 6y ago
It won't do what I want when I click it, So now I will open a ticket. It should do the right thing And not be a pain, Would you please help me out now and fix it?
dylan604 6y ago
iambic pentameter or haiku? my automated bug report diagnostic tools only read prose written by the Bard, so if you choose the wrong meter, your bug gets tossed to the "won't fix" category
- spicybright 6y ago
  I kind of want that to exist, actually
  - violiner 6y ago
    It would be sweet if you could configure the forms and meters that it would accept.
    - anticristi 6y ago
      I can already hear the next start-up pitch: "We use AI to convert inhuman proze into haikus. Our software improves customer service satisfaction by 30%."