schrieb Russ Allbery on 2011-05-24 18:55: > Patrick Strasser <patrick.stras...@tugraz.at> writes:
First, I want to emphasize that I do not at all advocate for a web reporting form. IMO most contributors to this thread do so. I regard the overall process of reporting bugs in Debian very sensible, no need to change in general. I see three issues mixed up here: 1) Web bug reporting facility, ala Ubuntu Launchpad 2) Helping reports writing high quality bug reports 3) Improving reportbug to mitigate bug report drafts that end up in /tmp > Debian bugs tend to be > of considerably higher quality than I see in other projects (like Ubuntu, > for example, where the bug quality is remarkably worse). And, like Ian, I > think some of that may have to do with Debian's bug reporting system, That's about point 1). Again, I do not think that a web-based bug submit front end would help to improve the situation. >> If it is about quality it needs action to educate users or help them >> writing better bug reports. > > Which also no one has time to do. But it turns out that not putting up a > public web form to submit bugs is a fairly good proxy for user education. > It doesn't *fix* the problem, but it does weed out a lot of users who > don't know how to file good bug reports (and some users who do, which is > indeed a drawback). Point 2). I do not think about going out and teaching people to report bugs. I rather think of some helping questions and information for bug reporting newbies. I usually recommend people to read Eric S. Raymond's "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way". reportbug tries hard to collect good information, I think it could improve in helping reports writing good bug reports. >> If it is hard to report bugs you will only get the reports of advanced >> users and only solve problems they can not get around > > This isn't my experience. Debian users seem to be fairly good about > reporting simple problems readily. Point 3). Still it's too hard for a real novice which would like to help to get a bug report not at all out. The starting suggestion for this thread was to add an HTTP based transport path to get around the MTA thing. In the mid 90ies I was starting with a dial up connection, which was expensive, and I was glad that I could queue my outgoing mail and have them shipped together. I needed a working MTA in my box. Nowadays for me there's no point in having a non-local MTA, I have DSL and alway access to my ISPs mail transport system, which means I have direct access to BTS. I just second the proposal to have a backup to the mail transport in form of a HTTP or some other direct connection transport. Nothing more. Mail is fine, having a backup is even better. Regards Patrick [1] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- Engineers motto: cheap, good, fast: choose any two Patrick Strasser <patrick dot strasser at student dot tugraz dot at> Student of Telemati_cs_, Techn. University Graz, Austria -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/irh0mf$tq4$2...@dough.gmane.org