Bug reporting/tracking needs improving

[aelfinn]

This is something I have been saying for a while: bug tracking for Linux Mint seems to be a mess. For RCs, bugs are to be reported in the comments to the announcement post; some people will always post something worth looking at in the forums; and then there is Launchpad. I tried the latter, but the bug was never assigned to anyone and never resolved in that version of Mint. In the forums, there seems to be nobody who will systematically scour posts for reliable bug reports, see to their being fixed, and post on the thread what action is being taken and whether a solution has been found. Same thing for blog posts: There are scattered edits by Clem, which are fine as far as they go; but there needs to be a substantial response to every serious report. Otherwise people will get discouraged and not make the effort anymore, thereby ridding Mint of a potentially huge resource. And it could be fixed with some manageable but serious planning.

What do you all think?

[DataMan]

Are you volunteering to help in this effort?

Remember, Mint (with the exception of over-worked Clem) is comprised of non-paid volunteers at every level.

-DataMan

[Orbmiser]

"For RCs, bugs are to be reported in the comments to the announcement post"

Yep found that unusual and not to my thinking of the way to handle it. As a sticky in the forum to me would be more beneficial to all I would think.

But Everywhere I've read in the Linux community is nothing but Outstanding Praise for Clem and his small pool of developers.
And what they have accomplished in a reasonably short period of time. With a Distro's that are many times fully functional right out of the box for the majority of user's. Of course there is going to be bugs & funky drivers not supported kinds of things.

Yes any tracking system can become convoluted and overwhelming to maintain. And maybe with a small staff not the right fit for them?
It's quite a masterful juggle and undertaking to keep all the balls in the air when you have more balls than hands.

So volunteer and add your two hands to help out if it isn't progressing as fast as you think it should. And do agree with you that it should be better. But then again it is easier to point from outside into the problem then from inside pointing out.
.

[monkeyboy]

What do you all think?

I like Mint because it works so the current bug reporting process is not a problem for me. However everyone has a different trigger level on "issues" so I wish you luck.

[aelfinn]

Are you volunteering to help in this effort?

Great illustration of my point, DataMan. Telling people (explicitly or implicitly) that their pointing out problems is not helping is a problem.

Also, if someone who can actually speak for the project had asked me to volunteer a couple of hours per week, I would have gladly said yes—after all, if I didn’t think this problem was important, I wouldn’t have brought it up. Instead, though, what you get is sarcastic comments that are in aid of nothing.

[BucolicBuffalo]

Agreed. There are so many layers of forums stacked upon forums that it's hard to find the best place to post for help. We need people viewing so we can help each other quicker.

[DrHu]

Probably bugs, at least as well documented descriptions should not be in a comments area, but instead be in a real bug post/response area..

Now I guess the main problem will be the reporting: to wit are you reading a bug or is it some user misunderstanding or lack of documentation that might make it seem to be a bug to a user..

I don't know that in these flexible forums that there will be any easy answer to self-reporting of bugs/issues vis-a-vis releases of the different Mint versions
--user comments about issues in the general sense, will seem to fix most issues users will have, , and if it is a bug, the likely-hood is that it may already be posted and responded to on Ubuntu (or launchpad..)

And the response to launchpad reports in Ubuntu for example might not be the best user experience either, even though that is their forum for bug reports
--I also see complaints about that process.

As far as the volunteers go, they don't self-select themselves they are picked in some mysterious way/method that we, as users will have no insight to..
--no clue what it (volunteering) might depend on..