On samedi 16 octobre 2010 at 21:29, Marc Paré wrote : > There would be no middle man. Once the middle-man could replicate the > bug and verify the bug with other users, then the middle-man would > submit to bugzilla. That's it. From there on, the middle-man will take > care of testing requests from devs.
That would only work for pure software bugs. If the bug is hardware related, it is unlikely that the "middle man" will be able to reproduce it. For those we really need the input from the real bug reporter. And for software bugs, the "middle man" would have to reproduce the software environment of the reporter, which may be complicated if he installed software from third party (or worse, proprietary software). Sometimes the problem is obvious and only related to a single package, and for such case a forum with some contributors reproducing the bug and then submitting a bug report may work. But if the problem is related to a particular combination of packages then the "middle man" could spend a considerable amount of time replicating the reporter particular configuration before he can actually reproduce the bug. I think it may work if those "bug friends" (don't remember who proposed that name) only take for themselves the simple, one package, software only bugs, and suggest to the reporter to create himself a bugreport (eventually providing assistance if the reporter has never done it before) describing his problem, because the devs will really need his feedback first hand. That forum would be an easier entry point than bugzilla for users not familiar with bugreports. -- Renaud Michel