Should we have a "please fix" or "bug reports" section here ?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by JohnC, Mar 16, 2006.

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  1. JohnC

    JohnC

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    Hi all,

    I was over at another Forum (the vBulletin forum, which is the script software you're viewing right now) and they have a good way of handling "bug reports" and other issues that inevitably come up.

    Users are encouraged to put each "issue" in a separate thread in a sdidicated "Bug Reports" forum. If an issue comes up in another forum, the Admins move the thread to the "bugs" forum as required. Each thread is checked by an Admin and...
    - If the issue is false (or by design), they report so and leave the issue (or an alternate solution).
    - If the issue is proved, they escalate it and give it a tracking code in their development system
    - When a tracked issue is solved, they move the thread to a "fixed" sub-forum

    This has a number of advantages :
    a) users are encouraged to provide product feedback
    b) users can SEE if a problem is already known and being worked on
    c) users can see that stuff actually does gets solved (good PR)
    d) it's a lot more formal and easier to document that having them mixed into the other forum topics.
    e) it collects it all into one, easy to manage place - easy to search
    f) no need to re-explain the same issue over and over (especially if it's a "undocumented feature" that is actually there by design).
    g) CIS get 1 report with multiple responses from Users, rather than multiple reports about 1 issue which might not individually make sense (that make sense?)

    The reason I mention this is that I seem to find an incredible number of small (and some major) issues with CIS software. I just posted a small one as a PS on the end of this thread : http://www.cbusforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2166

    But I feel embarrassed to report them all - I feel I am clogging the forums with these "annoying problems" and would prefer another place here to report them. The forum is FAR better than doing it via email to customer service, because we Users never get feedback on small things... and some issues need confirmation by other Users

    It is also frustrating for we Users that there are Tracking Numbers for known issues that the CIS team are working on - yet we don't know about them. Occasionally Duncan will mention them, but it's a waste of time for everyone reporting and re-reporting stuff that is "already known". For some reason, CIS doesn't seem to "publish" the BugTraq issues (embarrassed, or company policy?), yet it's actually a fairly common thing to do for commercial software.

    I am sure that we all understand that there will always be problems with software. And we also appreciate that there are LOTS of things on the to-do lists. But a bit more transparency would really help us Users - perhaps even stop us hassling the engineers to much ;)

    Just my 2c - anyone else got a view on it?

    Cheers, John
     
    JohnC, Mar 16, 2006
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  2. JohnC

    Duncan

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    Hi John,

    Without wishing to dismiss or invalidate any of the suggestions you've made.. CIS is currently happy with the role, participation, content and arrangement of the Forums.. we could well revisit this at some point in the near future.. but for now we're too busy to even contemplate it.
     
    Duncan, Mar 16, 2006
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