I am asking for a better system for bug reporting because the worklist idea is not working for us, the Alphas.
Here are the reasons…
The Alpha testers are all at various stages of understanding the platform, its unreasonable to expect them all to know the difference between a bug and their lack of understanding, so for them its mostly a case of "I cant find the thingy that makes the whatsit show up."
Some people can report bugs but are unsure of how to convert a simple “something doesnt work” into a constructive “this is a worklist job” and so nearly all the bugs are being left unreported by the most of the alphas.
Some people that have placed worklist suggestions have largely given up on this because their suggestions seem to get ignored and finally after a short time it gets auto passed. This results in 3 mistakes, 1. The bug continues, and 2. Now there is no record of it ever being reported, and 3. The tester gets dejected feeling ignored and eventually gives up trying to help.
There is no way of us seeing any bug history, we dont know whats being worked on we dont know whats been reported before and so we have no indication of any of the bugs being fixed or even reported. Many Alpha testers are so put-off by this that they dont bother with the alpha program and just use the platform to build and test things for themselves or play house.
There isnt much point directing people to things like Jenkins or commits as most dont know how to decipher from these.
Some people use the forum to bring up a bug hoping it gets moved to the worklist by a developer, it rarely does.
There is no way of adding credibility to an existing report by other testers adding extra info to the worklist, people just feel excluded.
If any of what I have said seems misguided or exagerated then I suggest you look at the number of worklist jobs created as bug reports by the alphas in the last 12 months and ask yourself if this is an acceptable amount of reporting.
If it is, then I suggest thats because there is already enough known bugs to keep all your people busy, and thats acceptable but the reports, (known only as suggestions) fall thru the cracks because there are only 2 options, set to bid or pass, and if it doesnt get set to bid, thats the end of it, the bug remains, seemingly unreported.
There needs to be a place for a developer to say “yes this is a bug and we have added it to our to do list thank you” or “no this is not a bug, this is expected behavior” the result here is the bug doesnt fall thru the cracks and can be worked on at some time in the future and the tester feels that his efforts are not in vain.
I know that most people do want to help. They will help if it is easier.
Thank you.
