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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

#81

Post by neilv »

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.

Yes, disappointing handling of the bug reports, discouraging that person from doing bug reports again for anyone.

As a submitter, you can decide to invest in someone's detailed bug report form, including attaching screenshots, etc., maybe taking an hour or more, and derailing the work mental mode you were in.

After that work, what you learn most likely happens next is one of the following:

* Silence.

* "Yes, that's a problem." Then silence.

* 6 months later, automated email saying that this bug is automatically closed, due to inactivity.

* 2 years later, automated email that they've done a new release, so they've decided to throw away all open bug reports. But if you still find the bug in the new version, you can file a new bug report, they graciously offer.

* "We know about that bug, but we aren't going to fix it." For reasons you don't understand. And if there's a cultural mismatch, the tone can come across as hostile or disingenuous, besides.

* "This is a duplicate of bug X." It is not.

* Closes the bug report suspiciously, perhaps for optics or metrics.

* (Silence FAANG Special Edition: A high-profile bug report, on which tens or hundreds of knowledgeable people are adding on, for years, all saying this bug is a huge problem, and many asking in the bug report comments why is nobody from the FAANG even acknowledging this bug report in their own bug system.)

Suggested practice: If you ask others to invest in reporting bugs (by having that bug report form there), then follow through in good faith on the bug reports you receive. (At least on the bug reports that seemed reasonable, and that invested effort in your process.)

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

#82

Post by ryandrake »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #29
mmsc wrote: post #4

The difficulty in reporting a bug comes from the friction required to filter the "page doesn't work" with no further explanation reports, or the "my neighbour is a spy for the government and I have proof" reports (real types of reports for a browser company, for example, which surely exist for other places users think that "is" the internet like Facebook). I agree that reporting bugs can be hard, but the amount of sp…

> The difficulty in reporting a bug comes from the friction required to filter the "page doesn't work" with no further explanation reports This so much. I can't tell you how often I've seen someone trying to get tech support on something say "When I load the program, I get an error" but don't even say what the error says. I understand that most people have never worked a QA job and so don't know how to write a good b…

> "When I load the program, I get an error"

You're lucky if they even say that. Many public bug trackers I've seen are just filled with spam, entitlement and anger, demands/threats, or incoherent fever dreams of very unwell people. Forget about getting logs or reproduction steps. When you open bug tracking up to the public, you're lucky if what you get back is even remotely serious.

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

#83

Post by YetAnotherNick »

socalgal2 wrote: post #79
esafak wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple has one of the most public support community[0]. You can get workarounds for most of the bugs, but never from official devs. Even hours old post has dozens of replies[1].

[0]: https://discussions.apple.com/welcome [1]: https://discussions.apple.com/community/macos/sequoia

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

#84

Post by Vilian »

keyringlight wrote: post #66
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you’re complaining that listening to your users is hard and you wish a machine could help you with it. That's entirely the wrong take, IMO. Listening to users is easy, but the users often don't say anything when they speak. Those non-reports are basically spam that should be automatically thrown away.

When a mozilla application crashed it'll ask you to leave a comment to try and help resolve the issue when it prompts to send crash info, and you used to be able to see all those comments on https://crash-stats.mozilla.org (it seems to be behind login or restricted access now). There was a lot of vitriol and unhelpful comments that any developer would need to wade through to get to anything to give them a lead

It also leave a coredump, they can remove repeated entries and then filter by good comments

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

#85

Post by Vilian »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #29
mmsc wrote: post #4

The difficulty in reporting a bug comes from the friction required to filter the "page doesn't work" with no further explanation reports, or the "my neighbour is a spy for the government and I have proof" reports (real types of reports for a browser company, for example, which surely exist for other places users think that "is" the internet like Facebook). I agree that reporting bugs can be hard, but the amount of sp…

> The difficulty in reporting a bug comes from the friction required to filter the "page doesn't work" with no further explanation reports This so much. I can't tell you how often I've seen someone trying to get tech support on something say "When I load the program, I get an error" but don't even say what the error says. I understand that most people have never worked a QA job and so don't know how to write a good b…

Relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/2501

It's weird seeing people without computer familiarity using one, it feels like they are blind, they click in a button with a label and a icon, and when you ask todo it again they can't find it(even when you literally tell them the button name), it feels like their vision FOV is limited to a few centimeters, like those horror games flashlight lol, it's my own experience, but yeah, they aren't going to remember the error, or don't even read it, imagine print screen it before clicking "ok"

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

#86

Post by Vilian »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #70
cosmotic wrote: post #19

For many corporations, there are probably perverse incentives against making it easy to report bugs.KPI of reported bugs as an indicator of software quality, for example.

Certainly seems like there must be some KPI against fixing the bugs. You can look to any big tech software and find oodles of long standing bugs which never receive attention.

Fixing bugs don't create features, that upset execs

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

#87

Post by dmitrygr »

Working at google taught me to not bother. An android bug I filed the month that I joined was closed a part of "bug bankruptcy" seven years later, having never been triaged. Why bother? When I was quitting - a year after that, the actual bug still existed.

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

#88

Post by solarkraft »

When I encounter a bug, I will almost never report it either, I’ll hope that someone else will or the developer will notice themselves while using their product.

Reporting a bug is work. If it is certain that the bug will be fixed upon reporting this work may be worth doing for selfish (or non selfish) reasons, but I almost never have confidence that it is.

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

#89

Post by sh34r »

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.

Gitlab begs to differ.

The number of times I’d google my problem and find a ticket from 6+ years ago with dozens of users participating in the comments, confirming it’s a consistent, common problem, and not a peep from their devs.

It’s like their public issue tracker only exists to insult their users.

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