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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

#71

Post by Animats »

If you submit a really detailed bug report, such as one where the problem was reproduced under a debugger, it becomes a "the reason you suck" speech. This really upsets some dev teams. The usual responses of the "turn it off and on again" and "reinstall" don't make the complaint go away.

There are two bugs in Firefox I'd like to report, but it's futile. One is that, launched on Ubuntu, Firestorm does disk I/O for about three minutes on launch. During that period it can't load complex pages, although it loads ones without Javascript fine. The other, again on Ubuntu, is that it freezes when large text boxes are being filled in. This only happens on some sites.

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

#73

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

Animats wrote: post #71

If you submit a really detailed bug report, such as one where the problem was reproduced under a debugger, it becomes a "the reason you suck" speech. This really upsets some dev teams. The usual responses of the "turn it off and on again" and "reinstall" don't make the complaint go away. There are two bugs in Firefox I'd like to report, but it's futile. One is that, launched on Ubuntu, Firestorm does disk I/O for abo…

I feel like on windows there's similar issue - after crash (force close) Firefox will load UI fast, but spend several minutes to not show black screen instead of websites in my session

I remember finding 3 year old reddit post about this, and I have no idea whether the bug got into normal reporting place (where even is it?)

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

#74

Post by rikroots »

> Would love to hear if you’ve faced similar problems, and if this feels like something that would’ve helped in your own projects.

Maybe people could combine this reporting solution with a bug capture solution I built a few weeks ago? It's a web-based screen recorder which allows a user to gather together several different areas of the screen into one place, add a talking head of themselves and demonstrate/explain the problem they've encountered. The resulting video could be added to the bug report. I built the tool because showing the problem is always better than trying to explain it in words.

Tool: https://kaliedarik.github.io/sc-screen-recorder/ GitHub repo (it can be forked, self-hosted, etc): https://github.com/KaliedaRik/sc-screen-recorder

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

#75

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Sounds like a great idea.

I have found that users don't give feedback, positive or negative, until they encounter some extreme (usually negative).

I have found the best way to encourage feedback, is to make it dirt simple. Just a text entry field, with some way to respond, so you can follow up.

Most of the work needs to be on my end.

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

#77

Post by briandoyle81 »

I really like how some indie games have put in a widget for feedback. Press F11 or something, click an emoji face, optionally add a description, and click send. The game takes care of sending a screenshot, game state etc. (It tells you it's doing this in the interface)

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

#78

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

_wire_ wrote: post #61

Any involvement in reporting / fixing bugs is development. Why do app developers think their customers need to be or want to be developers? What other industry relies on its customers as implicit developers? Making bug reporting easier means an intentional push to foist more of Development's work upon customers and a bias towards more bugs. BUG OR FEATURE? If you can't tell, then we can understand why Knuth call it "…

I think reporting problems is just part of being a good citizen that participates in a shared culture. If I visit a park or shop and something is broken, it's worth putting in a bit of effort to report it. If everyone chips in a little bit of effort it makes the overall experience of everyone much better. Are you the type of person to also not return the shopping cart to the corral?

The number of hardware and software combinations are impossibly large, so you're unlikely to be handling everything perfectly if the application is doing anything complicated.

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

#79

Post by socalgal2 »

esafak wrote: post #63
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.

Transparency in the form of a public ticket tracker would solve that.

Apple doesn't have this. They're super successful. I hate it! But, clearly that's not an argument most bean counters are going to care about given such successful companies have some of the worst feedback mechanisms.

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

#80

Post by socalgal2 »

pxtail wrote: post #45
eastbound wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tell my customers that they should spend 1hr per month “improving the vendor”. See, if you rely on a vendor, then you need them to survive. It’s a parasite-host relationship. You need to tell them what you need, and oftentimes they will bend the roadmap in favour of the most demanded features. Alternatives: - They choose their most amusing feature, - They choose the most lucrative feature among the new possible mar…

Nice, I hope you are spending 1h per month for each customer as well advising them how the can get the most out of your service and/or improve their integration - otherwise it would seem like you are expecting unpaid work from your customers, which is ridiculous.

I hired a house cleaner. I didn't tell them what to do because figuring that out is their job. They didn't do the things I wanted and they even missed some spots on what they did do. I didn't tell them about that either. It's they're job. So I fired them and switched to another. Repeat. Maybe eventually one of them will figure it out.
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