512177 - No way to report uncategorized/unknown categorization bugs

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Bugzilla :: Creating/Changing Bugs, defect)

Description

[Denny Crane]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090803 Fedora/3.5.2-2.fc11 Firefox/3.5.2 GTB5
Build Identifier: 

User wishes to submit a bug report, but user cannot always determine the correct categorization for their bug. What does the user do? Probably nothing, which is some times or even generally an undesirable outcome! There should be a special "I don't know where to put this" category at the beginning or end of the lists or in some other discoverable location. This will allow users of lower technical skills or technical knowledge relating to the particular software to report the bug while someone else can assign to the correct category.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Frédéric Buclin]

All products have a description, which is visible when you start filing a bug. If the user really has no idea what he is talking about, it's probably better to not submit the bug. And if administrators think an "Unknown" product makes sense, they are free to create such a product.

Comment 2

[Denny Crane]

That's a ridiculous and snobbish attitude to take. Have you ever considered that it might not be the user's fault? Maybe the description sucks, or maybe the product is mistakenly absent from the list. Maybe it's not clear what the hell category the component is under. For example, Gnome, a rather large project for the most popular Linux desktop environment, makes use of notification popups like the following:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_SDd59HFkDQI/SWsSQnvrhmI/AAAAAAAAAVA/xT-CzLwMzdc/s800/linux-notifications.png

Is it obvious where a bug report or feature request for this goes?:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi

Maybe it's not even a subproject of Gnome, but it is used by that project, so at the very least it could help in directing the user to the right place for a component which affects the user experience for their project.

In any case, assuming the user is an idiot, like I said, is a ridiculous and snobbish response. We are talking about BUG REPORTS, remember? Obviously the developer isn't perfect if they need a facility to collect these reports, and obviously, the fact that the user is having a problem doesn't mean they're an idiot!

Comment 3

[Frédéric Buclin]

Again, the administrators are free to create an "Unknown" or "General" product. They can also use the guided format available in Bugzilla, which is what e.g. Mozilla does. There is no need for an extra feature.