[Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

[Marc Paré]

Le 2010-10-16 18:35, Romain d'Alverny a écrit :
> On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 21:29, Marc Paré<marc at marcpare.com>  wrote:
>> Le 2010-10-16 12:36, Ahmad Samir a écrit :
>>
>>> It's much better to help the user formulate a useful bug report,
>>> that's easier / more productive for all involved parties.
>>
>> There would be no middle man. Once the middle-man could replicate the bug
>> and verify the bug with other users, then the middle-man would submit to
>> bugzilla. That's it. From there on, the middle-man will take care of testing
>> requests from devs.
>>
>> As far as reporting back to the original user who reported the bug, as an
>> extra gesture of kindness, the middle-man would just post on the "Report a
>> bug" forum that the bug has been quashed or is still under review ... but
>> not to the user but to the "Report a bug" forum.
>>
>> The idea is to keep the flow of possible bug reports coming in an organised
>> way. The middle-man would have to be someone with a little more experience
>> than that of a new user and also someone who has an interest in working this
>> way. We will get more bug reports from users by keeping it simple and easy.
>
> Yes, and for everyone.
>
> I tend to agree with Ahmad, as well as with you.
>
> You may as well imagine we improve the Bugzilla process with a
> front-process, guiding the reporter about her bug report.
>
> That may be a forum with people active there, educating the user about
> the bug and the reporting process;
>
> And/or that may be a better designed bug reporting process with a
> better flow (providing and getting info to/from the user), querying a
> knowledge-base, filtering known/resolved queries out of
> yet-another-duplicate-bug-report and ultimately opening a bug in
> Bugzilla with a specific interaction to the user (so she knows what
> happens next).*
>
> That removes the middle-man issue and that filters out as well people
> that are not concerned enough to report/follow-up on a bug (provided
> the process is, indeed, better designed and better welcomes the end
> user).
>
>
> * moreover, I believe this type of improvement would benefit many,
> many, if not all, projects using a bug report tool.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Romain
>

Thanks for the note Romain.

I think what this all boils down to is, does the Mageia project want to 
actively seek out bugs and encourage its users to report bugs? If Mageia 
is interested in seriously quashing bugs, then the reporting process has 
to be streamlined in such a way as to encourage the reporting of bug as 
painlessly as possible for users. Human nature being what it is, people 
will gladly report a bug if there is a way to do so quickly and easily. 
However, it gets more complicated if you ask users to follow up on their 
bug report, as in bugzilla.

IMHO, it would be easier if Mageia offered users:

-- The reporting of bugs through bugzilla as is usually done, and the 
devs can work out these problems with the normal messaging that normally 
goes along with the bugzilla process.

-- For users who have no intention of being part of bugzilla and who 
would still like to report a bug, a forum discussion where a "middle 
man" or "bug facilitator" would help triage the bugs in this forum, 
verify the bug and then submit it in their name. The user would not be 
obligated from this point on to involve herself with the testing of 
possible bug repairs. The "bug facilitator" would be obligated to the 
usual bugzilla process. Of course if the user wished to learn more and 
participate in the bugzilla process, then the "bug-facilitator" could 
help mentor the user to the bugzilla process.

This way the user would have 2 methods of reporting, one with a certain 
amount of commitment and the other with no commitments other than 
reporting and doing a quick verification with the help of the "bug 
facilitator".

The devs would not be part of this process and would work through the 
bugzilla as usual. And the bug reporting would, IMOH, be more streamlined.

Marc