Hi All, On Sat, 2014-07-19 at 22:57 +0300, Arto Jantunen wrote: > (please don't CC me on replies, I read the list) > > Abou Al Montacir <abou.almontacir@sfr.fr> writes: > >> We have several forums for user support requests, the main one being > >> debian-user@l.d.o. The bts "general" pseudopackage is not a user support > >> forum. The consensus for dealing with user support requests being filed > >> as "general" bugs has always been "close the bug and instruct the user > >> to contact a support forum, mainly debian-user". When what the user is > >> seeing turns out to be a bug in some package debian-user can also help > >> with producing an actionable bug report against that package. Perhaps > >> this needs to be documented more prominently? > > > > While I agree that the pseudo package "general" shall not be used as a > > help forum, I don't like to close a bug abruptly. Also in this case the > > current bug we are dealing with is probably a real bug. > > It might indeed be a real bug, but not in any Debian package. I don't > know what distribution the user runs, but his kernels come from an > Ubuntu PPA. In any case "something no longer works but I have no idea > how to find out what" isn't an actionable bug report, it's a request for > support. upgrade ==> not working anymore ==> bug I think this is a typical acceptable situation, what ever the user's level of experience. It is more about how much we care about our users rather than about the validity of the bug report. A user may need to install third parties packages, and we are in the right to refuse supporting this. But we can not ask our users to be either a real hacker or to stop using our SW. > > I'd recommend that reportbug(-ng) provide a clear message when creating > > a bug, just like some other packages do it (evolution to name my > > preferred mail client). This will then filter more this kind of reports. > > > > Then if the user reports a bug we need to understand it and try to fix > > it. Maybe adding debian-user to the list of users monitoring bugs > > against "general" pseudo package could also help in this case. > > I don't think reportbug should allow filing bugs against general at > all. The extremely rare cases when one is needed can be filed manually. > > -- > Arto Jantunen This is probably a valid point. If you consider reports against general as for experienced users only then make reportbug(-ng) refuse filling bugs against them and send rather a request to d-u or even better, create a separate DB for support, a kind of BTS coupled with d-u. Cheers, Abou Al Montacir
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