284807 - Firefox bug reporting is needlessly complicated, discouraging people from posting/searching bugs

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[James Schend]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

There are multiple parts to this "bug."

To begin with, the program and official webpage have no link to "Report A Bug."
 The closest match on the website is Knowledge Base.  You are directed to a wiki
page where you must click "Known Issues"
(http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_Issues) to find known bugs.

Once you've determined your bug is not on that page and you want to report one,
you are directed to the Firefox Bug Forum (http://forums.mozillazine.org/) where
you must (again!) search for your bug.  If you wish to have a discussion on any
of the issues reported there, you must create an account.

Nothing in the Firefox Bug Forum actually ends up on the list to get fixed (in
fact, it seems to be nothing but a giant flamewar as far as I can tell), so you
have to go back to the Wiki and use the Bugzilla link
(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/) to enter the official Bugzilla site.  From here
you have to create an account (again!) to create a new bug.  On the new bug
creation form, you must search for your bug (again!) before you can actually
fill in the fields and post it to be fixed.

In total, I had to visit three entirely different websites, sign up for two
entirely different accounts, and search for my bug in THREE different places
before I could post it.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Forgetting everything you know about the Mozilla product or Bugzilla, try to
report a bug from the perspective of an average user.
Actual Results:  
I finally managed to post a bug after about a half-hour of searching.  But I
would wager most people would have given up much earlier.

Expected Results:  
1) There should be a link to "Report a Bug" in the Help menu of Firefox itself.
2) That link should go directly to a website where bug details can be searched,
then entered.  If an account is required, make the 'account creation' on the
same form as the bug report so that the user doesn't have to wait for
confirmation emails or paste in passwords consisting of random letters.

I consider this a bug in the web design.

Comment 1

[David Stone]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's why Hendrix (
http://hendrix.mozilla.org ) exists. Granted, it's not really visible to the
end-user yet, because it's still in beta. But the point is that they
(mozilla.org staff) know that Bugzilla is too high a bar for most people to jump
over.

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

for expected Results:
1) is a wontfix because many users would use bugzilla as support forum and
bugzilla is not for support questions.
2) open Mozilla.org, select developers (because bugzilla is for developers) and
use the bugzilla link.

-> invalid

Comment 3

[James Schend]

Is Bugzilla JUST for developers, then?  Are you saying that end users should
never be using Bugzilla to report a bug in Firefox or Mozilla?

If Bugzilla is JUST for developers, as you say, then this is still an issue
because that wasn't stated anywhere in the long process I followed to figure out
how to post a bug.  It could have saved me a hell of a lot of time if, on the
first or second page, there was a simple message reading "end users should not
report bug to the Firefox developers."

Comment 4

[Ben Fowler]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Is Bugzilla JUST for developers, then?  Are you saying that end users should
> never be using Bugzilla to report a bug in Firefox or Mozilla?

Actually you could read bugzilla for a few days or weeks before posting
to get an understanding of what people mean when they say that 

"Remember, bugzilla.mozilla.org is not a support medium, but a tool for 
testers and developers to organize their work on Mozilla products. If 
installing a recent build is something you don't want to do, well fine, 
but then it is very unlikely that you can contribute something useful to bugzilla."

> If Bugzilla is JUST for developers, as you say, then this is still an issue
> because that wasn't stated anywhere in the long process I followed to figure 

I try not to dish out rudeness, but this time I will make an exception.
Please do not use insulting expressions of disbelief, such as "..., as you
say, ...". You imply that Matthias has no right to make factual posts
(to reach Bugzilla, start at the Firefox Central page
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/central.html click on a link
to take you to http://www.mozilla.org/developer/ where you will see
links titled "Report a Bug" and "Bugzilla"). In fact Matthias posts concise
(brief, accurate and complete) comments on scores of bugs every day.
I appreciate this, even if you do not. It is also possible that Matthias
is posting in a foreign tongue and you are not.

> It could have saved me a hell of a lot of time if, on the
> first or second page, there was a simple message reading "end users should not
> report bug to the Firefox developers."

I agree that the documentation could be simpler and clearer, however I don't
agree that it is totally inadequate.

The first page to go to is 'Firefox Central'. This has links to "Frequently
Asked Questions" and "Several ways anyone can help". Let us take the latter,
which takes us to the "Enter Bug" page that has a link to "Mozilla
Support", the next step (taking the Firefox Product as an example) takes
us to the "Enter a Bug" page which has a link to the "Bug Writing Guidelines"
which contains this passage:

"The Mozilla bug tracking system (Bugzilla) allows any interested 
individuals on the Internet to directly report and track bugs in 
mozilla.org open-source projects like the Mozilla Application Suite 
or Mozilla Firefox. ..."

Yes, for the labour of setting up a Bugzilla account, you get to inject
Bugs into the system and watch the developers at work. (There are probably
fewer than a dozen who handle the hard problems, create patches and actually
know the code well enough to fix things).

If it helps you, part of your Report are Dups of
Bug 279696 "Please describe "what is bug" and "b.m.o is not Help center" in 
bug writing guidelines"
Bug 266960 "Nobody can be recruted to a bug fixer"

The problem you are describing is not new.

Comment 5

[James Schend]

A few things, here.  This passage:

"The Mozilla bug tracking system (Bugzilla) allows any interested
individuals on the Internet to directly report and track bugs in
mozilla.org open-source projects like the Mozilla Application Suite
or Mozilla Firefox. ..."

Implied to me that *anybody* interested in the product, not JUST developers,
should be entitled to report and track bugs in Mozilla products.

I'm not implying that Matthias' instructions as to how to post a bug are
incorrect, I'm implying that his statement "bugzilla is for developers" is
incorrect or at least inconsistant.  Matthias says that bugzilla is for
developers, the quoted passage above says that it's for anybody wanting to
participate in the project.  I'm not trying to be rude, of course, and I hope
you can see my train of thought.

In any case, surely you agree that having three separate sites in which
users/developers must search for known bugs before posting a bug is redundant? 
That's the problem I'm pointing out, here.

Thank you for pointing out duplicate bugs, they did not show up with the search
string I used initially.

Comment 6

[James Schend]

Just one more quick comment... I looked at that Hendrix site, and that's about
exactly what I would expect to see as a bug reporting page for the average user.

Comment 7

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Bugzilla is a tool for the developers to track their work.
User CAN report bugs but they have to do several things if they report such a
bug. (Note: I'm also only an "advanced" user)

for example:
- reading http://www.mozilla.org/quality/bug-writing-guidelines.html
- Test your problem again with the latest trunk build before reporting
...

We need bug reports but only useful ones and bugzilla is not a place to ask for
support questions (many user think that they get support here).

Expected result 1) is a wontfix because we don't want support questions here
(and many users will do that with such an entry in the menu).
A confirmation email is required because we need valid email address and don't
want SPAM "bug reports" from anonymous people. It'`s the way bugzilla works and
without that it would be like the MZ Forums :
"Nothing in the Firefox Bug Forum actually ends up on the list to get fixed (in
fact, it seems to be nothing but a giant flamewar as far as I can tell)".

Easier bug reporting would work if we hadn't millions of users (From Developers
to Joe's Grandma).

And I have to only look on one site if I try to search a bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/query.cgi


Your bug report is invalid because we don't see it as bug in the web design.

Comment 8

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

--> Websites :: www.mozilla.com so timeless can close out Firefox :: Product Site.