dave simmons et al
Here is a longer version of what Charlie said, plus some extra comments etc.
I want to talk about the issue of users posting their problems in the forums and subsequent requests by moderators,
developers and others advising them to post a bug report, which is then followed by less than pleasant interchanges and abrupt responses.
Until there is some other resolution eg the forums are shutdown or some other drastic steps taken to force users to the bug tracker,
I have some suggestions for adoption by all users.
I think that we cannot force people to use the bug tracker, so we have to accept that many posts will still be made to the forums
that should be bug reports.
The short commonly used response of, "Don't report problems here - Please report bugs and potential bugs in the bug tracker",
seems to annoy some people, whereas others readily follow the request.
I see no problem with the approach, after all this is a technical forum and people "should" be level headed at all times.
Unfortunately there seem to be regular gamut of "hot headed" or "oversensitive" users, who choose to complain readily and take offence at such suggestions & comments. I observe that many of these incidents occur when users are in a hurry to fix their production server,
or otherwise "tearing their hair out" to resolve an urgent problem that has just developed in the middle of the night or during office hours
or similar such "urgent" situations, and also involving people who have little knowledge of SME server, or perhaps have a lot of Linux
knowledge but do not understand the important differences between regular Linux servers and SME server, the "I know what I am doing" types.
These people are clearly in a hurry to get a fix, any fix or workaround is all they are interested in at that time.
Proper bug resolution procedures and the preserving of forensic technical evidence (eg settings, logs, system state and
current active processes and so on), is of little interest to them at that time of urgency.
This hurry contradicts with the developers and bugteam requirements, as the dev/bugteam are really wanting to determine and fix any bugs that can be identified, for the benefit of all users, but not primarily for the urgent benefit of the person who has a production
server in a non functional state.
There is no easy answer here, as the primary point of focus at that moment in time is very different for the end user and the dev/bugteam.
While they are not totally opposed, one just wants a quick resolution, whereas the other wants to work through the issues more slowly
and methodically to identify and determine the cause of the problem and thus a fix, which of course will ultimately provide the answer
for the end user.
As a means of tempering down and/or stopping negative responses by some end users (who seem to be in a hurry for an answer
and take offence easily), and to stop the subsequent time wasting and unnecessary "less than pleasant" follow up responses, I propose
the following alternative response from moderators, developers or others who recommend to lodge a bug report. You could say it's a little more explanatory and therefore hopefully more understood and tolerated.
This could even be a wiki page, and a short piece of text with a link to the page is all that is posted in the forum thread.
eg "Your problem sounds like a bug. For the recommended action to take please read the following
http://wiki.contribs.org/Lodge_bug_request_explanation"
The wording of
http://wiki.contribs.org/Lodge_bug_request_explanation could be:
"Your problem sounds like a potential bug.
The SME server design philosophy is "It should just work"
If you see errors, strange behaviour or something that is not working as expected, then the SME developers and bugteam consider these
as potential bugs. You are not expected to absolutely determine if your problem is a bug before lodging a report.
The dev/bugteam would like to investigate your problem further before forensic evidence (logs, system state etc) are lost.
Please lodge a bug report at
http://bugs.contribs.org/ and assist the expert team to diagnose the cause and resolve the problem
in a systematic manner, for the benefit of all users, yourself included.
The bug tracker (Bugzilla) provides a mechanism for follow up, posting of additional information, implementation of the fix and
ultimately closure of the bug (and reopening if necessary) etc, functionality the forums do not have and which is needed by the dev/bugteam.
We understand that you may be in a urgent hurry to fix your problem, and advise that in many cases the bug tracker will result in
the fastest resolution of your problem, as there is a team of SME experts available there to analyse your issue. Your assistance is appreciated."
Relating to the bug tracker:
In the event that the problem report is determined not to be a bug in Bugzilla then the answer given can be something like:
"Your problem has been determined not to be a bug with SME server or contribs. Thank you for reporting it here.
As this is not a help desk or a support venue, please ask for further assistance in the Forums at
http://forums.contribs.org/."
If people respond positively here to this suggestion, then I'll certainly arrange to raise it as a bug for action and consideration.
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