be nice to bug reporters (Re: Bug#96632: upgrading from 4.0.1 to 4.0.3 silently breaks keyboard configuration)
In response to a bug report, Branden Robinson wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 10:44:38AM -0700, Zooko Ozoko wrote:
> > Please upgrade this bug to "Serious" from "Wishlist".
>
> I will not, it's not "serious" by any stretch of the imagination.
>
> > Presumably this is a killer bug for people who both (a) do not use pc104
> > keyboard and (b) do not know how to keep their config files in RCS and are
> > willing and able to spend an hour fixing bugs when they upgrade. Therefo=
> re=20
> > I believe that it should be rated "Serious" or "Important" (I can't tell =
> the
> > which it should be even after reading this web page:
> > http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#severities).
>
> 4.1.0-1 will have a debconf question that asks about the keyboard
> configuration and sets up the keyboard accordingly.
>
> See the experimental X .debs at the repository in my .sig.
This feels rude to me.
Now I'm pretty sure that you didn't mean it that way. More than likely, you're
simply not thinking of the social implications and are just concentrating on
the technical issues at hand, which is understandable.
But feeling snubbed after submitting a bug report is the number one reason why
people stop submitting bug reports. This is important.
I spent several minutes of my valuable time writing the bug report, and I spent
couple more minutes reading `http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#severities',
trying to figure out the definitions for "Serious" and "Important" and writing
an explanation of why I thought that the bug was an important one. (It
disabled my ALT keys when I upgraded xserver-xfree86. Only because I'm a
clueful admin who keeps all my conf files in RCS was I able to figure out what
had gone wrong after a couple of hours of investigation.)
You responded to that with "I will not, it's not 'serious' by any stretch of
the imagination.".
This leaves a negative emotional feeling in my stomach. Next time I encounter
a problem on my system, and I considering whether to spend my time writing a
bug report or not, I probably going to feel that bad feeling again, and I'll be
tempted to say "Screw it, if you report a bug to debian you just get a sharp
retort.".
Look, I know what it is like to have to deal with a ton of bug reports. I'm a
developer on a free software project, http://mojonation.net/. We have plenty
of bugs, and I respond to plenty of bug reports. I *always* make a point of
thanking the submitter of the bug report (and no, I don't rely on the thanks of
our "auto-thank-you bot").
The reason that people submit bug reports is basically social. Be nice to
them.
Regards,
Zooko, submitter of a few dozen debian bug reports, many of which turned out to
be actual bugs and some of which turned out to be actually "serious" or
'important", whatever that means exactly
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