302231 - This is not a bug report, it is a bitter complaint about the bug reporting process

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

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

Description

[Paul Keating]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-GB; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-GB; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

This is not a bug report, it is a bitter complaint about the bug reporting process.

I now have list of 4 reproducible bugs in a particular release of Thunderbird.
But I am not allowed to report these bugs, unless I am prepared to spend the
best part of two hours downloading and installing the latest release and
reimporting my email files.

You are not prepared to accept a bug report in version 1.0.2 (20050317) of
Thunderbird. It has to be the latest version or nothing. 

The bug reporting procedure that is prescribed is all very well for a closed
group of geeks. It is entirely inappropriate for the mainstream product that
Thunderbird wants to be. In a mainstream software product, the burden of
establishing that a particular bug was fixed in release X falls on the
developers, not on the users. 

Please fix your bug reporting instructions, bearing in mind that WE ARE NOT BETA
TESTERS.



Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[timeless]

we're prepared to accept bug reports about the current released version which
atm is 1.0.x, given that 1.1 hasn't been released. but some of our over eager
volunteer qa will feel that it's fair for them to eventually ask you if you can
reproduce it with the current version. note that if we do ever get around to
deciding the bug is fixed, in all likelyhood the bug will never be fixed in
1.0.x and you will need to upgrade to a new version (1.1, 1.2, 1.5, whatever
thunderbird picks for its next version) in order to benefit from the fix.

if you have a specific page which you feel frightens you beyond reason, please
feel free to indicate that page in this bug, and we'll see about making it
slighlty less frightening. note that in most cases there are already at least
three reports, possibly half a dozen or more, about whatever issues you may have
in mind, and as such, searching to find a report is always a good idea.

Comment 2

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> The bug reporting procedure that is prescribed is all very well for a closed
> group of geeks. It is entirely inappropriate for the mainstream product that
> Thunderbird wants to be.

Very true. Bugzilla is explicitly for the closed group of geeks that can file
valid and useful bug reports. We are already awash in a sea of duplicate bug
reports, bugzilla does not scale to the number of Firefox and Thunderbird users
we have.

We have a wide variety of user support options: web fora, Usenet newsgroups, an
IRC chat server. These are much better at handling reports from mainstream
users. We recently added http://hendrix.mozilla.org as another avenue for
leaving feedback.

http://www.mozilla.org/support/

> In a mainstream software product, the burden of
> establishing that a particular bug was fixed in release X falls on the
> developers, not on the users. 

Absolutely. Report the problem through the mechanisms designed for users, and
the developers who interface there will test in the latest and turn it into a
bugzilla report.

> Please fix your bug reporting instructions, bearing in mind that WE ARE NOT BETA
> TESTERS.

The homepage of http://bugzilla.mozilla.org lists three better options before it
gets to the "report a bug" link. I think you want the "Leave quick feedback" link.