Re: Talk: Reflections of a bigtime Debian bug reporter

[Michael S Gilbert <michael.s.gilbert@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:19:12 +0200 Julien Cristau wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 16:41:50 -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> 
> > the answer to the real problem is education.  if a user didn't submit
> > sufficient details in their report, politely ask them for more. show
> > them a guide for strace, or bug writing guides, or debian
> > documentation, or whatever may be useful. this may be more work, but as
> > that user gains more skill, they will become less of a burden, and more
> > importantly, more capable of solving problems and writing good reports
> > on their own.
> > 
> you really think that's how it works?  how about "if a user didn't
> submit sufficient details, then either their bug gets ignored for years,
> or maybe at some point we ask for more info and they're unresponsive,
> meaning the bug never gets fixed".

of course many cases will not produce a self-actualizing contributor,
but it is worth the effort for those that do.  karma.

mike