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Show HN: Most users won't report bugs unless you make it stupidly easy

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Re: Show HN: Most users won't report bugs unless you make it stupidly easy

#121

Post by _345 »

AngryData wrote: post #103

I use to report bugs all the time with details of the bug and what I was doing and if possible how to cause it. But then when you encounter the same bugs years later doing some very common task that you momentarily forgot to do your work around for, it made me wonder why I was wasting my time reporting it. These days I rarely report bugs unless it is brand new software released a few weeks ago at most, or a brand new…

Yeah... unfortunately this is how it is at my company which is a startup, I reported so many bugs that just got ignored and it can be demotivating to see the same bugs still in our app months later that could've been fixed in 15 minutes

Re: Show HN: Most users won't report bugs unless you make it stupidly easy

#122

Post by handsclean »

AngryData wrote: post #103

I use to report bugs all the time with details of the bug and what I was doing and if possible how to cause it. But then when you encounter the same bugs years later doing some very common task that you momentarily forgot to do your work around for, it made me wonder why I was wasting my time reporting it. These days I rarely report bugs unless it is brand new software released a few weeks ago at most, or a brand new…

It depends on the company. I’d never dream of reporting a bug to Apple, they don’t care. I think your turnip truck analogy applies there. On the other hand, iA Writer consistently replies thoughtfully and usually fixes the bug.

It’s so important to treat companies individually instead of just according to some blanket impression of the world. Individual treatment means good companies benefit and grow, while blanket treatment actually actively rewards bad behavior: a company that invests in quality will bear the cost while you share the benefit with the competition, while a company that treats you worse will reap the savings while you take out your frustration on the competition, too.

Re: Show HN: Most users won't report bugs unless you make it stupidly easy

#123

Post by Aeolun »

halpow wrote: post #100
PaulHoule wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some teams have a frickin' bad attitude and couldn't care less. Try submitting a bug about how menus are displayed 5px from where they are supposed to be in a GTK app rendered on a X11-server that runs on the Windows desktop and see if the GTK developers care. Or try telling the react-testing-framework folks that they're asking me to put handrails in my bathroom when my house is burning down. Have experiences like th…

Don't forget all major OSS repositories using a stale bot to close any issue regardless of how many people reported it or how serious it is. Close and lock at times. Yikes.

I once saw one that only closed issues after two whole years of no response. I couldn’t help but think that was entirely fair.

Re: Show HN: Most users won't report bugs unless you make it stupidly easy

#124

Post by paradox460 »

For me the most fatal part of the big report loop is where you report a bug, and get radio silence, or a curt dismissal, and the bug lingers on.

Telegram for MacOS has a bug where it will occasionally crash when you try to delete something. I reported it nearly 2 years ago. It's yet to be fixed

On the flip side, I got some of Fireboard's pulse probes last year, and had an issue where they wouldn't connect to my Yoder smoker. Quick ticket and some easy debugging steps I was able to do more or less asynchronously, and a cause and fix was found: the Bluetooth stack on the smoker would crash after a while, so unplugging the smoker when it wasn't in use was an easy fix. The bug still remains in the firmware, but there is a solution that works for me, and so I'm happy with a functional product, while I wait for the firmware update

Re: Show HN: Most users won't report bugs unless you make it stupidly easy

#125

Post by maeil »

I strongly recommend going a lot less heavy on the LLM generated writing on HN, it reads far less genuine than when people here right stuff themselves.

Just in case you think it's the em-dashes that do it, it is isn't; it was clear by the end of the 2nd paragraph.

Re: Show HN: Most users won't report bugs unless you make it stupidly easy

#126

Post by leakycap »

socalgal2 wrote: post #76

This is a huge problem in Apple iOS land where the only way to leave feedback and tons of apps is to leave a review on the app store and then watch Apple delete it immediately

I've left plenty of complaints on App Store reviews and have never seen a review of mine taken down. Did you break some sort of rule in your review?

Re: Show HN: Most users won't report bugs unless you make it stupidly easy

#127

Post by inejge »

PaulHoule wrote: post #65
D13Fd wrote: post #59

The problem with bug reporting is that they rarely seem to get fixed. I used to do a lot more bug reports. But you often hear back nothing, and then the bug is never fixed, even if it would be an easy fix. These days, I don't often report bugs.

Some teams have a frickin' bad attitude and couldn't care less. Try submitting a bug about how menus are displayed 5px from where they are supposed to be in a GTK app rendered on a X11-server that runs on the Windows desktop and see if the GTK developers care. Or try telling the react-testing-framework folks that they're asking me to put handrails in my bathroom when my house is burning down. Have experiences like th…

> Try submitting a bug about how menus are displayed 5px from where they are supposed to be in a GTK app rendered on a X11-server that runs on the Windows desktop and see if the GTK developers care.

This one sounds so specific that I suspect you must have a reference to a bug tracker or a mailing list message somewhere. Do you? Having the context of the whole interaction is helpful when forming conclusions.

Without the benefit of such context, I'd suppose that the effort of reproducing the bug (not everyone has a Windows machine handy; the X11 server might be commercial or obscure) is a petty good reason for not giving it more attention.

Re: Show HN: Most users won't report bugs unless you make it stupidly easy

#128

Post by leakycap »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #13
graypegg wrote: post #5

I love the UI concept. Being able to point at a broken thing rather than try to uniquely describe the position/state/path to a broken thing is smart! Hooooever, "bug" could be a bit ambiguous to a lot of people. Looks like in a real deployment, you have a little tooltip that says "Spotted a bug? Drag me there!". That makes sense to developers and the like... but those are also the sorts of people most likely to write…

When I took a look quickly, it also shows the "Spotted a bug? Drag me there!" every time the page loads - which could quickly get overwhelming, and make the user wonder why the developer is so certain that they will run into a bug. (Why do developers not make "report a bug" obvious? Because just seeing it implies there are enough bugs that a link is necessary.) I also have no idea how well this works on mobile - and…

I agree - the attribution needs to be removed for paying customers, or at least for me to want to pay for it to use with a client.

The phrasing should be customizable. Even better if the bug is an SVG and I can paste in my own SVG for the bug icon.

I was worried about how it worked on mobile, and unfortunately on my iPhone I could not find a way to drop the bug where I wanted. It did show a popup eventually but it covers a lot of the page given it doesn't work as expected.

Just sharing thoughts/observations; I really like the concept as well.

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