On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 4:40 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Interesting post. Can probably be summed up "technical tool doesn't work well for non-techies." Film at 11.
Mark H. and I have had previous discussions about generally improving user feedback tools. The Wikimedia Foundation's approach seems to largely consist of a giant feedback bar with giant colorful faces (no, seriously: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MoodBar).
My notes on a better approach to this problem are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Kvetch. There are associated bugs scattered around as well.
You quickly run into an issue of scope, though. What should be flagged as a user content issue? What's a technical or software issue? What's a legal issue? And depending on the answer, there may be vastly different areas where to stick the issues (OTRS, a talk page, a noticeboard, reference desk, help desk, Bugzilla, etc.). But a generic reusable feedback tool that doesn't treat our users like retards would be cool.
Even if it just guided the user to the appropriate place. Help wizard, maybe? Dunno.
MZMcBride
The whole "post bugs to a talk page" thing with features roll outs (or in general) really bug me and I believe i've made that view quiet well known in several places (and I know other people share this view as well).
As for the whole BugZilla vs Other reporting tools, I think our primarily demographic (especially more on the MediaWiki side of this) is more the semi technical side compared to the less technical demographic.
Although in the last "OMG lets overthrow BugZilla and replace it with X" mailing list thread, There were apparently some improvements/features we could change in our installation to make it more "friendly", If anyone ever followed up on looking at this I don't know.
(I personally like BugZilla, Out of all the bug reporting systems i've used as a semitechnical person, I think it has the right mix of "stuff for unadvanced" and "stuff for advanced" users on the submission pages [and other areas])