Bug submissions, Feature requests and Voting

[Ken Ray]

> I figured I'd better put in my two eurocents' worth
> before the end of the discussion this time ;-)
> 
> Frankly, I think voting on bugs is a _bad_ idea.

Personally, I had always looked at voting as being important for
upcoming feature enhancements (which is the way it was built into
RevZilla before Mark enabled the voting features in Bugzilla).


> What revolution needs is a plug-in that IS the 
> bug reporting system, to be shipped with the program. 
> I seem to have seen that someone (was it Ken Ray?) 
> who is developing a Rev-like interface to Bugzilla. 
> Something along those lines would be much more 
> suited to this kind of application.

Yes, it is me. RevZilla is available right now through RevNet or from my
web site. I built it *because* I didn't like the web interface and I
wanted something that could be used "right there" when you discover a
bug.

> Bug reporting systems should also be EASILY searchable 
> (and Bugzilla isn't), and it should help novices file 
> reports that are appropriate - ie, directed at the 
> appropriate area, using the correct jargon, etc. If 
> that doesn't happen, then information is misfiled, 
> you get enormous amounts of duplicate or closely 
> related bugs, and searching the database becomes 
> increasingly ineffective.

RevZilla's search interface is more usable that Bugzilla's (IMHO),
although your comments about guiding people to post bugs in a clear and
consistent way is important.

> If the amount of information needed to complete even 
> a simple bug report is too extensive, then the whole 
> process should be broken down into easy steps, and 
> users should perhaps be 'prompted along' with a series 
> of dialogues, in a step1, step2, step3 kind of way - 
> Bugzilla's options just seem too overwhelming.

Well, one thing is that in both Bugzilla and RevZilla many of the
options are set for you by default. So at a minimum you should only need
to enter three pieces of information: what component the bug applies to,
a summary and a description.

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/