Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Closing down Bugzilla? · 2008-11-12 12:16 by Wladimir Palant
I mentioned this in my MAOW presentation already — Bugzilla isn’t exactly a very useful tool when it comes to the Adblock Plus project, at least not any more. All people who want to help others hang out in the forum and I am usually the only one who looks at bug reports in Bugzilla. As the time I have available varies (and I prefer to spend it on development anyway), some questions go unanswered for quite a while. And almost all of those questions are filter issues or Firefox bugs anyway, so they don’t really need my attention. Even for the real bug reports, I’m not the only one able to request additional details from the bug reporter.
Add to this that people are reluctant to report bugs in Bugzilla. It requires registration and your email address will be visible to the entire world. So this might be one reason why people prefer to send mails directly to me. But on the other hand, Bugzilla gives a better overview about things that still need fixing, better than what we had in the forum so far.
One solution that I see would be a “Bug reports” forum with strong moderation. That means that people should still be able to create topics there, but things that aren’t Adblock Plus bugs (filter issues, plugin-related Firefox bugs, users not finding the relevant options) should be immediately moved out to “General”. On the other hand, bugs reported in “General” should be moved to “Bug reports” once it becomes obvious that we actually have a bug. Bugs that have been fixed and duplicates should be marked in the title to make finding outstanding issues easier (I have been doing that in the “Future development” forum already). I hope to get some help moderating this new forum.
As to the bugs page, rather than refer to Bugzilla it should link to the forum (maybe even to the “new topic” page) and note that registration is not required. It should also note that false positive issues are better off reported to the maintainer of the filter subscription in use (link to subscriptions page). And I will create forum topics for all the “real” bugs still in Bugzilla.
Any opinions? Maybe some ideas on how to “fix” Bugzilla rather than close it down?
Comment [6]
Commenting is closed for this article.
pirlouy · 2008-11-12 14:19 · #
Bugzilla UI is terrible. We can see it’s a developer toy/tool.
Forum is much more easy for users.
So if you want bug reports from developers, keep Bugzilla.
If you are more interested by (everyday) users bug reports, then your forum idea is the good one.
Max Kanat-Alexander · 2008-11-12 16:01 · #
You could make a form on the adblock plus site that files bugs using a dummy account via the Bugzilla WebServices API. You could have a field for the user’s email address, and then you mangle it in some very intense way and put it into the first comment.
You could also have a drop-down that asks whether this is a support request or a bug, and if it’s a support request it should go to the forum instead.
-Max
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
Problem with the first suggestion: that encourages “hit&run” bug reporting which my Bugzilla bug reports already suffer under. It is very rarely that the original bug report already contains all the necessary details, and I often have to resolve reports as INVALID because I cannot get anybody to answer questions. With anonymous bug filing that would be even more a problem. For some reason this is far less of a problem in the forum, people usually come back to look at how their thread progresses even though registration isn’t mandatory.
As to letting people choose: most of them are convinced that they are reporting a bug. Users rarely know the difference between filter issues and Adblock Plus bugs, particularly because they usually never have to deal with filters themselves (a filter subscription is installed on first start and that’s it for them). And a crash that is “definitely” being caused by Adblock Plus isn’t identifiable as a Firefox bug.
George Florentius Epin · 2008-11-14 05:34 · #
Project launch : Code program bloc to read in lines to equation a multiple at code zero.X#Tuti mobile communication company reads HELO di mana kau acai.
George Florentius Epin · 2008-11-14 05:38 · #
Code HIT to run #read at point 20/19 to bloggers ccode HELO.
Systems to code zero reader@.magnify.
Josh · 2008-12-02 11:44 · #
At least for my part, I’d argue in favor of Bugzilla. It sucks in various ways, but it does some reasonable metadata tracking that forums do not. In particular, it can sanely distinguish open and closed bugs, and it can show me all of my own open bugs. Yes, you can try to fake it with moderation, but you really need a tool with some reasonable idea of what constitutes a bug report. The use of a forum would make me much more inclined to report a bug and forget about it, since I don’t really have any other need to participate on the forum.
Now, on the other hand, it might make a lot of sense to switch to some other bug-tracking tool rather than bugzilla, if you want something saner.
cubefox · 2008-12-03 19:03 · #
if you want to refer in the “bugs page” to the forum, you should add noticeable warnings, that people should…
- not post something as a bug if they are not sure if this is really a bug – instad of this, posting in the general forum is better
- search the forums für a smiliar bug before posting
- use a suitable, precise topic title which merges all relevant onformation
- add information about their OS, their browser (+ version number), their adblock plus version, other installed extensions, and other information which could be important
- add a step-by-step instruction to reproduce the problem (if possible)
Without such warnings, half of all users will post their “bug” in the bug section, even though most of them are no bugs but normal problems.
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
People who don’t want to read instructions won’t read them no matter how big you make them. Fortunately, the people in the forum are pretty good at dealing with that. But I’ll certainly add some instructions on how to create good bug reports (in particular, on staying around to provide additional information).
“not post something as a bug if they are not sure if this is really a bug” – most people won’t know what a bug is, the experienced users in the forum will have to decide. So somebody will have to move the topic anyway. However, I am experimenting with some instructions on the “getting started” page to allow users recognize filter issues (most common “not a bug” reason).
“search the forums for a similar bug” – actually, I have more problems with the people doing that than with the people who don’t. Problem is, they will often find something “similar” and post a “me too” comment that is totally unrelated. Or just post “I have a different issue but I didn’t want to open a new thread”.
Just a note: since Adblock Plus 1.0 release three bugs (real ones) were reported, yet not a single one in Bugzilla. This clearly disqualifies Bugzilla, so closing it isn’t a question any more.