3 ms·

Gotta love the AOL-level "[happened to] me too!" comments... After maybe the 4th or 5th "me too!" comment, you're not giving any more information by adding that

Gotta love the AOL-level "[happened to] me too!" comments... After maybe the 4th or 5th "me too!" comment, you're not giving any more information by adding that it happened to you too.. [1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/A/AOL-.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/A/AOL-.html

michaelteter 3y ago
There’s the worse comment, “I’m not seeing that behavior.” Those are especially helpful. And then there’s the owner/company response to a trouble report: “nobody has reported this”
- bawolff 3y ago
  > There’s the worse comment, “I’m not seeing that behavior.” Those are especially helpful. On the contrary those are helpful. It means the steps to reproduce are unclear or incomplete.
  - michaelteter 3y ago
    True, insofar as knowing that the problem doesn't affect everyone. But often the key people responsible use that phrase as a shield to seemingly reject the suggestion that there is a problem. I've experienced this so many times with ISPs over the years. I offer them a lot of details, but the most common initial (and final) response is "nobody else has reported this". Obviously the first person reporting a problem will be in this situation.
    - bawolff 3y ago
      Developers aren't telepaths though. It is the reporter's responsibility to describe the problem in enough detail that anyone can reproduce it. > But often the key people responsible use that phrase as a shield to seemingly reject the suggestion that there is a problem. Have you ever been on the other side of this? If a single person reports that something sometimes doesn't work, they don't know under what circumstances it doesn't work or have any meaningful description on how to make it do the problematic thing, and nobody else is experiencing it - 9 times out of 10 its a problem with the reporter. Even if it isn't, the description of the problem is so vague and useless there's nothing to be done.
bawolff 3y ago
I think its psycohological - users don't have a lot of power and want to feel they are doing something. In the phabricator bug tracker there is a feature i like called tokens where users can award tokens to a bug (i guess its the same as github reacting to the bug, but i like how phab did the ui better). Lets users note that it is affecting them without derailing the conversation. And it is useful to have a rough count of how many users are affected by a bug. Especially for the harder to reproduce ones where it is unclear if investigating is worth it.
- weare138 3y ago
  I'm sure that contributes but there's another side to the issue that drives it. Getting devs and especially commercial vendors to pay attention to the issue. It's become all to common place for vendors to abuse their bug reporting systems to minimize the impact of problems they can't or don't want to deal with like closing multiple reports as duplicates while ignoring the primary one. How often have people had to come on HN and post their issue here to pressure a vendor to address it? Unfortunately the social commentary dogpile has been one of the few effective methods lately.
  - bawolff 3y ago
    Vendors don't owe it to you to fix your bugs unless you have some sort of support agreement that says otherwise. Its not abusive to close duplicate reports of a bug that is not currently prioritized. It would be impossible to prioritize every single bug.
    - weare138 3y ago
      That's like saying Ford doesn't owe it to you to fix a defective vehicle because they don't feel it's a priority.
      - bawolff 3y ago
        If its not safety critical and you don't have a warranty then they don't
OJFord 3y ago
Even worse IMO are all the screenshots of print dialogues.. not screen recordings showing the behaviour, just screenshots after an alleged reproduction... Not that there's any particular reason to disbelieve them - it just doesn't add anything to the claim, there's no particular reason to disbelieve them absent a screenshot of a print dialogue either. It's like 'my computer will not boot [photo of a computer powered off]'.
hoosieree 3y ago
Oh my gosh I also noticed that!
- iforgotpassword 3y ago
  Same here on Firefox
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

michaelteter 3y ago

There’s the worse comment, “I’m not seeing that behavior.” Those are especially helpful. And then there’s the owner/company response to a trouble report: “nobody has reported this”

bawolff 3y ago
> There’s the worse comment, “I’m not seeing that behavior.” Those are especially helpful. On the contrary those are helpful. It means the steps to reproduce are unclear or incomplete.
- michaelteter 3y ago
  True, insofar as knowing that the problem doesn't affect everyone. But often the key people responsible use that phrase as a shield to seemingly reject the suggestion that there is a problem. I've experienced this so many times with ISPs over the years. I offer them a lot of details, but the most common initial (and final) response is "nobody else has reported this". Obviously the first person reporting a problem will be in this situation.
  - bawolff 3y ago
    Developers aren't telepaths though. It is the reporter's responsibility to describe the problem in enough detail that anyone can reproduce it. > But often the key people responsible use that phrase as a shield to seemingly reject the suggestion that there is a problem. Have you ever been on the other side of this? If a single person reports that something sometimes doesn't work, they don't know under what circumstances it doesn't work or have any meaningful description on how to make it do the problematic thing, and nobody else is experiencing it - 9 times out of 10 its a problem with the reporter. Even if it isn't, the description of the problem is so vague and useless there's nothing to be done.

bawolff 3y ago

I think its psycohological - users don't have a lot of power and want to feel they are doing something. In the phabricator bug tracker there is a feature i like called tokens where users can award tokens to a bug (i guess its the same as github reacting to the bug, but i like how phab did the ui better). Lets users note that it is affecting them without derailing the conversation. And it is useful to have a rough count of how many users are affected by a bug. Especially for the harder to reproduce ones where it is unclear if investigating is worth it.

weare138 3y ago
I'm sure that contributes but there's another side to the issue that drives it. Getting devs and especially commercial vendors to pay attention to the issue. It's become all to common place for vendors to abuse their bug reporting systems to minimize the impact of problems they can't or don't want to deal with like closing multiple reports as duplicates while ignoring the primary one. How often have people had to come on HN and post their issue here to pressure a vendor to address it? Unfortunately the social commentary dogpile has been one of the few effective methods lately.
- bawolff 3y ago
  Vendors don't owe it to you to fix your bugs unless you have some sort of support agreement that says otherwise. Its not abusive to close duplicate reports of a bug that is not currently prioritized. It would be impossible to prioritize every single bug.
  - weare138 3y ago
    That's like saying Ford doesn't owe it to you to fix a defective vehicle because they don't feel it's a priority.
    - bawolff 3y ago
      If its not safety critical and you don't have a warranty then they don't

OJFord 3y ago

Even worse IMO are all the screenshots of print dialogues.. not screen recordings showing the behaviour, just screenshots after an alleged reproduction... Not that there's any particular reason to disbelieve them - it just doesn't add anything to the claim, there's no particular reason to disbelieve them absent a screenshot of a print dialogue either. It's like 'my computer will not boot [photo of a computer powered off]'.

hoosieree 3y ago

Oh my gosh I also noticed that!

iforgotpassword 3y ago
Same here on Firefox

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]