Seems to me, if we're receiving 'incomplete requests', then maybe there's a way to drive towards more complete requests.
In the LoadRunner forum on SQAForums, they're pretty militant about getting environment information upfront before they'll answer questions. Maybe if we adopted some sort of a set of questions to be answered, then we might get some more thorough questions and be better able to provide answers. Something akin to: Ruby version: Watir version: OS/browser versions: Code: HTML: What's wrong/not working/whatever (how 'bout an error message?): Granted, there are some questions (and/or people) for whom this might be a little ridiculous...but it could make for an easy template to spit back at the incomplete request. Like you said, it really isn't terribly different from someone logging a defect/enhancement/whatever. So a little pushback, I think, might get things moving in a better direction. On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Bret Pettichord <b...@pettichord.com>wrote: > > This is a note to those of you who are answering other people's > questions here. The rest of you can stop reading. > > Really. If you stay I'll just hurt your feelings. > > Ok. We need to have a frank discussion. We're getting a lot of crappy > questions. > > There are a lot of requests for help coming in where the requester is > posting way too little information for any one to possibly help them. > And what's worse, you ask for more info and they reply with a lot of > blather, but don't actually give you the information that we need to > answer their questions. > > I've been getting sucked into this myself lately. I feel bad for them. I > want to help. "When you say it doesn't work, are you getting an error > message?" How many times do we need to ask this here? And then they > reply, telling us they tried something else, but it didn't work either, > and they still don't give us an error message! Or they give us just part > of the error message. Or they leave out the stack trace. I guess they > assume that because the stack trace looks like a bunch of gibberish, it > won't help us either. You'd almost think that maybe they don't know > anything about testing software or how to write a bug report. > > I learned how to extract a stack trace from a core file 20 years ago so > that I could include it in my bug reports. With Ruby it just gets > printed out. It's just a matter of cut and paste. > > "Can we see your script?". "Have you read the FAQ?" "What have you > tried?" -- How many times do we have to ask these questions? > > What can we do about it? > > 1. Stop responding to incomplete requests. Maybe they will repost with > more information. Maybe not. Anyway, just ignore them. > 2. Humiliate them and question their right to claim to be a tester if > they can't even report a problem correctly. Make it clear that Watir is > only for testers who have some basic competence. > 3. What else? > > Bret > > -- > Bret Pettichord > Lead Developer, Watir, www.watir.com > Blog, www.io.com/~wazmo/blog > Twitter, www.twitter.com/bpettichord > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Watir General" group. To post to this group, send email to watir-general@googlegroups.com Before posting, please read the following guidelines: http://wiki.openqa.org/display/WTR/Support To unsubscribe from this group, send email to watir-general-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/watir-general -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
