[gentoo-dev] Re: Bug voting

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Lance Albertson posted <4108F79B.20903@gentoo.org>, excerpted below,  on
Thu, 29 Jul 2004 08:11:55 -0500:

> I meant to post this for the list too, but with regard to lack of
> documentation for users about our bugzilla, I created a bug [1] to track
> progress of it. If any of you would like to contribute, please feel
> free!
> 
> [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58651

I must say, and I'm sure it's been said before, so pardon my venting,
Gentoo's Bugzilla layout is about the most unintuitive thing I've EVER
seen.  It's a good thing there's the bug entry wizard in place, or things
would be MUCH worse.

It's not Bugzilla itself, either, as Gnome's interface, which I use for
PAN bugs as I follow the lists for it very faithfully, and the Mandrake
interface, for their bugzillas, were MUCH easier to work with.

Intuitively, while the product might be Gentoo Linux, the component should
be the ebuild one wishes to file the bug on, but it doesn't WORK
intuitively!

Anyway, Gentoo does great documentation, and with the bug entry wizard,
the bugzilla interface is at least semi-usable, but Gentoo bugzilla is
still by far the worst aspect of Gentoo Linux I've yet come across.  It
NEEDS some good documentation, as that's the ONLY way one can make heads
or tails of it.  Unfortunate, because that's NOT supposed to be the way
GUI  interfaces work.

(It didn't help that I tried to be a good boy and do a search before
filing my bug, thus, before I met the bug filing wizard, which would have
introduced me to the peculiarities of the Gentoo bugzilla setup.  I don't
swear that much, but I was swearing THAT day, and the fact that I was
searching for a bug I'd found and intended to report if it wasn't already,
as will of course be the usual way folks meet bugzilla, didn't make things
any better!  Sorry if I'm stepping on people's toes, but I'm not sure it
could have been made more difficult if that was the intent!, at least
without changing bugzilla significantly to do so.  The layout is AWFUL!!)

Unfortunately, for compatibility with both people and applications,
there's probably not a lot that can be done about the bugzilla layout
now.. except add more wizards and documentation to it.    I'd seen
references (in the AMD64 technotes) about searching for the application
name in the summary.  At the time, I thought to myself that was stupid,
because it should be in one of the dropdown box selections to prevent
typos and the like.  THEN I went to USE the thing, to actually SEARCH for
a bug, before filing my own, and the reason for having to search the
summary for the app title became ALL to apparent!

Did I say it's terrible, yet?  What about that it's the worst part of
Gentoo that I've come across?  I did.  Oh..  It's still true!

As I said, tho, I'm sure it's all been said b4.

.. But that doesn't make it any less true!!

I wonder what score bug voting would place on a bugzilla usability bug.
I'm sure by now you know where many of MY votes would be likely to go!

Documentation DOES help, tho, even if with this layout it needs to be
step-by-step.  I followed the amd64 technote instructions and just had my
first two keyword bugs resolved, altho I still have a portage bug (56785),
complete with simple (sed command change, simple enough for even /me/ to
figure out, even if I can't figure out Gentoo bugzilla without a wizard)
resolution in a followup comment, that has received no action besides
assignment to the portage folks by bugwranglers, and is still marked as
new, more than two weeks later.  (That's frustrating, but not like trying
to use bugzilla in the first place! <g>  Yes, it's THAT bad, unfortunately.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin



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