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

Sun Oct 17 05:11:16 CEST 2010

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
+
+