I don't think we should aim to cater to non-developers at all. The changes that a
non-developer finds a real bug are very very small (in my previous life as an academic I
have done a lot of research on Bugzilla and developer productivity and it's based on
that experience that I am making this statement). I think that if a newbie / non-developer
finds bugzilla then he /she should be redirected to either IRC / Teahouse / Talk pages /
FAQ or any other support channel that we have. They can always be send back to file a bug
report.
If we are going to spend effort on improving bugzilla then it should be focused (IMHO) on
matching a bug with the right developer (right meaning a person who can actually fix the
problem). It is this area that Bugzilla (or any other bug tracker AFAIK) provides very
limited support.
-- Diederik
On 2012-05-14, at 1:10 AM, Ryan Lane wrote:
I don't
think you'll ever find a finished bug-/issue-tracking solution that
caters just as well for newbies and developers. The main reason is (of
course?) that most issue tracking software is written for developers, by
developers with little or no experience or thought as to what makes a good
end-user experience. Also, most issue tracking tools are *made
deliberately* to work best for developers - with human (end-user)
interaction kept to a minimum. That's also why most issue tracking
solutions end up looking like glorified (not the good kind) spreadsheets
(Mantis, Flyspray, others?), something the IRS would want you to fill out
(BZ, OTRS, RT, others?), or some kind of bastard child in-between (The Bug
Genie, Redmine, Jira, Fogbugz, others?).
I'd like to go one step further. There is not a single good bug/issue
tracking system in existence. Yes, I'm completely serious too. I've
come to believe that it's impossible to make one that anyone will be
happy with. That includes most developers of tracking systems too
(I've written one, and I hated it, though I liked it better than what
I was using before).
We can complain about this till the end of time. This discussion is
even worse than bikeshedding discussions. At least with bikeshedding
discussions you end up with a color for the bikeshed. When discussing
bug/issue trackers you just end up with the same tracker, or another
crappy tracker.
- Ryan
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