mbox series

[0/2] improve bugreports

Message ID 35de2d76-a03e-4a36-9bb7-6b6ffa4ea123@gmail.com (mailing list archive)
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Series improve bugreports | expand

Message

Rubén Justo March 23, 2024, 5:32 p.m. UTC
Let's try to improve the readability of the bug reports we receive.

The first message should not receive many comments.  The second one
might.  I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks.

Rubén Justo (2):
  bugreport: add a new line between questions
  bugreport: add a mark to each proposed questions

 builtin/bugreport.c  | 16 ++++++++--------
 t/t0091-bugreport.sh | 12 ++++++++----
 2 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

Comments

Rubén Justo March 31, 2024, 7:04 a.m. UTC | #1
On Sat, Mar 23, 2024 at 06:32:35PM +0100, Rubén Justo wrote:
> Let's try to improve the readability of the bug reports we receive.
> 
> The first message should not receive many comments.  The second one
> might.  I'm open to suggestions.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Rubén Justo (2):
>   bugreport: add a new line between questions
>   bugreport: add a mark to each proposed questions
> 
>  builtin/bugreport.c  | 16 ++++++++--------
>  t/t0091-bugreport.sh | 12 ++++++++----
>  2 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)
> 
> -- 
> 2.44.0.494.g7a0daf3e0d

This series received no response.  One option may be because it went
unnoticed, another because it may not add value.  I'm going to give it
another try and I'll quietly :-) take silence as confirmation of the
second option. 

I'll try to increase the chances of getting a "looks good" by CC'ing
some folks involved in the bugreport tool.

Thanks.
Eric Sunshine April 1, 2024, 3:09 a.m. UTC | #2
On Sun, Mar 31, 2024 at 3:04 AM Rubén Justo <rjusto@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 23, 2024 at 06:32:35PM +0100, Rubén Justo wrote:
> > Let's try to improve the readability of the bug reports we receive.
>
> This series received no response.  One option may be because it went
> unnoticed, another because it may not add value.  I'm going to give it
> another try and I'll quietly :-) take silence as confirmation of the
> second option.
>
> I'll try to increase the chances of getting a "looks good" by CC'ing
> some folks involved in the bugreport tool.

For what it's worth, when I read the cover letter of this series, I
thought it was going to clean up the list of questions to eliminate
redundancy. In particular, of the three questions:

   What did you expect to happen?
   What happened instead?
   What's different between what you expected
        and what actually happened?

the final one seems to repeat what the first two ask, and it is common
when answering the third question for people to simply repeat what was
said in response to an earlier question.
Junio C Hamano April 1, 2024, 9:29 a.m. UTC | #3
Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> writes:

> redundancy. In particular, of the three questions:
>
>    What did you expect to happen?
>    What happened instead?
>    What's different between what you expected
>         and what actually happened?
>
> the final one seems to repeat what the first two ask, and it is common
> when answering the third question for people to simply repeat what was
> said in response to an earlier question.

The third one may need to be rephrased, but I think it should still
be there.  The intent is to make the reporter realize how unhelpful
their answers are when they answer the first two questions with

 - I expected it to work correctly
 - It did not work correctly

They hopefully would realize that "work correctly" needs to be
elaborated in order to answer the third question in a useful way.
If the first two questions have been answered in a usable way, the
third one is often redundant.
Rubén Justo April 1, 2024, 7:27 p.m. UTC | #4
On Sun, Mar 31, 2024 at 11:09:02PM -0400, Eric Sunshine wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 31, 2024 at 3:04 AM Rubén Justo <rjusto@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 23, 2024 at 06:32:35PM +0100, Rubén Justo wrote:
> > > Let's try to improve the readability of the bug reports we receive.
> >
> > This series received no response.  One option may be because it went
> > unnoticed, another because it may not add value.  I'm going to give it
> > another try and I'll quietly :-) take silence as confirmation of the
> > second option.
> >
> > I'll try to increase the chances of getting a "looks good" by CC'ing
> > some folks involved in the bugreport tool.
> 
> For what it's worth, when I read the cover letter of this series, I
> thought it was going to clean up the list of questions to eliminate
> redundancy. In particular, of the three questions:
> 
>    What did you expect to happen?
>    What happened instead?
>    What's different between what you expected
>         and what actually happened?
> 
> the final one seems to repeat what the first two ask, and it is common
> when answering the third question for people to simply repeat what was
> said in response to an earlier question.

Certainly, a diagnostic questionnaire can always be improved.
Unfortunately I do not have a better wording to offer here to reduce
that sense of repetition.

Thanks for your response.