Re: [tdf-discuss] FreeDesktop Bugzilla

----- Original Message ----

> From: Charles Marcus <CMarcus@Media-Brokers.com>
> To: discuss@documentfoundation.org
> Sent: Thu, November 11, 2010 10:29:53 AM
> Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] FreeDesktop Bugzilla
>
> On 2010-11-11 9:47 AM, Rainer Bielefeld wrote:
> > the current bug tracking  system is sufficien for expert communication,
> > but if masses of users  will file their problems, we will loose overview,
> > soon. There are too  less sort criterias for subcomponents, OS-Versions,
> > LibO version and and  and, afaik we don't have an useful permissions
> > management ... . I'm  afraid we will run into problems. Is there any
> > discussion concerning  solutions for these problems?
>
> 'Masses of users' will not know how to  properly report bugs.
>
> As I have advocated in the past (on this and the  OOo list), I would
> suggest a two-tiered system - a simple bug reporting page  for end users,
> where they can report bugs, document format/compatibility  problems and
> feature requests. This page should simply require a validly  formatted
> email address, and should not require the user to create an account  or
> 'log in' to anything.

Mozilla resolved the issue for Firefox/Thunderbird by having a multi-tier 
system:

1. If you are reporting a feature request, then yes you need an account to their 
bugzilla to enter it.
2. If you are reporting crashes, then Firefox/Thunderbird bring up a special 
crash dialog for the user to enter what they were doing and any other comments 
when the crash occurred; it then takes care of submitting things per process.

This seems to cover most use cases. The majority of users will not care about 
feature requests - just making it so it doesn't crash.
Those that do care about feature requests should probably be required to login 
to bugzilla; in the alternative, I'd suggest that they first be forced to 
communicate with the developers who can then enter a bugzilla request and CC 
them.

As I mentioned, this seems to work pretty well for Mozilla and their various 
projects. Gentoo does the same; though they also follow the alternative.

And yes, I've submitted bugs to both projects and have gone through getting 
accounts - it's really not that much of a hassle to do. If you really wanted to 
make that less of a hassle, then integrate OpenID or something similar for the 
bugzilla login - since Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook, and numerous others support 
OpenID, compatible, and similar methods - so users would be able to use their 
e-mail to login and not have to worry about passwords; at the same time it keeps 
the system clutter free from bug spamming since not just anyone could enter a 
bug, those that do can be tracked, and spam-bots could be denied.

$0.02

Ben


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