Re: "If you're still seeing problems, please reopen." [Was: bug#25148:]

["John Wiegley" <johnw@gnu.org>]

>>>>> "ÓF" == Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es> writes:

ÓF> Debbugs is the only user-facing bug tracker I know that requires studying
ÓF> its magic incantations to complete tasks which are trivial on any other
ÓF> system. Not to mention that, after all that studying, it still won't
ÓF> provide basic features which exist and are trivial to use elsewhere.

Just to add my 2c here: I've never encountered an actually good issue tracker.
Either it's pretty and leads to unmanagable chaos (GitHub Issues), or it's
ugly and requires undue patience and expertise, yet gives experts great
reporting and control (Jira, Bugzilla, etc).

As for debbugs, let's be politik and just say we know it isn't a modern bug
tracker. But if Eli is cranking out fixes for bugs, then I'm happy with it. If
users are getting their fingers burnt, I'd rather see if we can band-aid that
problem until we find something else that works equally well for our
developers who are pouring uncountable hours of their lives into this project.

Like it or not, they get the priority right now. Being nice to new users is
great, but until they become contributors and ease our workload, serving them
can't be the priority. The goal of Emacs isn't to win hearts and minds, it's
to be a good editor and a flagship for the FSF. If RMS decides that "flagship"
means user experience, that's one thing; if it means a truly solid code base,
that's another. Yes, both is the perfect world; but there are times when we
have to choose one over the other. For me, right now, I'd rather have one Eli
than a thousand new users who merely praise us for the excellence of our bug
reporting mechanism.

Now, I'm all for there being a group of us who care deeply about the user
experience, and who work with Eli to optimize that experience as best we can
while still keeping his workflow running smoothly. I'd be more than willing to
spend time coordinating such efforts.

To date, my own experience with debbugs is:

  1. I don't know how to close a bug.
  2. I don't know how to find the information that tells me how to close a
     bug, not without spending about 15 minutes Googling.
  3. So I e-mail Eli, "Halp, please close bug XXX".
  4. Eli, being more responsive that I ever expect a volunteer to ever be,
     closes it before the day ends.

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2