I recognize that this is annoying from a user perspective, but I do understand it. Not all bugs are easily reproducible (and even if they are 100% reproducible for the user, it's not always so easy for the developers). Also sometimes you make a change to the code that you think might be in a related area, and so sometimes the most "efficient" thing is just to ask the user to re-test. When I close an old bug that is n…
> keeping the bug open when realistically I can't really do anything with it might be worse I've heard this from others before but I really don't understand the mindset. What's the harm in keeping the bug open?
Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed
51–60 of 314 posts
Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed
#52I suspect that this is a common approach. It maybe even works, often enough, to make it standard practice.
For myself, I've stopped submitting bug reports.
It's not the being ignored, that bothers me; it's when they pay attention, they basically insist that I become an unpaid systems engineering QC person, and go through enormous effort to prove the bug exists.
Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed
#53to be fair this is pretty common spring cleaning in any bugzilla...
I was literally just coming in here to comment "in before someone says this is fine and there's no issue." and the first(!) comment is effectively "this is fine and there's no issue." The sentiment feels like software folks are optimizing for the local optimum. It's the programmer equivalent of "if it's important they'll call back." while completely ignoring the real world first and second-order effects of such a pol…
Of course, the developers should be determining if the bug may have a greater impact that will or does cause a problem that impacts revenue before closing it - not doing that is negligent.
Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed
#54I recognize that this is annoying from a user perspective, but I do understand it. Not all bugs are easily reproducible (and even if they are 100% reproducible for the user, it's not always so easy for the developers). Also sometimes you make a change to the code that you think might be in a related area, and so sometimes the most "efficient" thing is just to ask the user to re-test. When I close an old bug that is n…
> keeping the bug open when realistically I can't really do anything with it might be worse I've heard this from others before but I really don't understand the mindset. What's the harm in keeping the bug open?
But I find that sometimes I can tell from experience that the IR is not actionable and that it will never be fixed. Some examples:
* There's not enough info to reproduce the issue and the user either can't or won't be able to reproduce it themselves. Intermittent bugs generally fall into this category. * The bug was filed against some version of the software that's no longer in production (think of the cloud context where the backend service has been upgraded to a newer version).
Sometimes the cost to investigate a bug is so high relative to the pain caused that it just closed as a WONTFIX. These sometimes suck the most because they are often legitimate bugs with possible fixes, but they will never be prioritized high enough to get fixed.
Or sometimes the bug is only reproducible using some proprietary data that I don't have access to and so you sometimes have no choice but to ask the bug filer "can you still reproduce this?".
Computer systems are complicated. And real-world systems consisting of multiple computer systems are even more complicated.
Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed
#55At some point the leadership introduced an SLA for high then medium priority bugs. Why? because bugs would sit in queues for years. The result? Bugs would often get downgraded in priority at or close to the SLA. People even wrote automated rules to see if their bugs filed got downgraded to alert them.
Another trick was to throw it back to the user, usually after months, ostensibly to request information, to ask "is this still a problem?" or just adding "could not reproduce". Often you'd get no response. sometimes the person was no longer on the team or with the company. Or they just lost interest or didn't notice. Great, it's off your plate.
If you waited long enough, you could say it was "no longer relevant" because that version of the app or API had been deprecated. It's also a good reason to bounce it back with "is still this relevant?"
Probably the most Machiavellian trick I saw was to merge your bug with another one vaguely similar that you didn't own. Why? Because this was hard to unwind and not always obvious.
Anyone who runs a call center or customer line knows this: you want to throw it back at the customer because a certain percentage will give up. It's a bit like health insurance companies automatically sending a denial for a prior authorization: to make people give up.
I once submitted some clear bugs to a supermarket's app and I got a response asking me to call some 800 number and make a report. My bug report was a complete way to reproduce the issue. I knew what was going on. Somebody simply wanted to mark the issue as "resolved". I'm never going to do that.
I don't think you can trust engineering teams (or, worse, individuals) to "own" bugs. They're not going to want to do them. They need to be owned by a QA team or a program team that will collate similar bugs and verify something is actually fixed.
Google had their own versions of things. IIRC bugs had both a priority and s everity for some reason (they were the same 99% of the time) between 0 and 4. So a standard bug was p2/s2. p0/s0 was the most severe and meant a serious user-facing outage. People would often change a p2/s2 to p3/s3, which basically meant "I'm never going to do this and I will never look at it again".
I've basically given up on filing bug reports because I'm aware of all these games and getting someone to actually pay attention is incredibly difficult. So much of this comes down to stupid organizational-level metrics about bug resolution SLAs and policies.
Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed
#56> perhaps praying that the bug had magically disappeared on its own, with no effort from Apple. I suspect that this is a common approach. It maybe even works, often enough, to make it standard practice. For myself, I've stopped submitting bug reports. It's not the being ignored, that bothers me; it's when they pay attention, they basically insist that I become an unpaid systems engineering QC person, and go through e…
Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed
#57It is known for decades that Apple largely ignores bugreports.
Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed
#58Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed
#59Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed
#60I recognize that this is annoying from a user perspective, but I do understand it. Not all bugs are easily reproducible (and even if they are 100% reproducible for the user, it's not always so easy for the developers). Also sometimes you make a change to the code that you think might be in a related area, and so sometimes the most "efficient" thing is just to ask the user to re-test. When I close an old bug that is n…
> keeping the bug open when realistically I can't really do anything with it might be worse I've heard this from others before but I really don't understand the mindset. What's the harm in keeping the bug open?