reportbug should not ask novice users to pick RC severities by name

[Debian Bug Importer]

Automatically imported from Debian bug report #295386 http://bugs.debian.org/295386

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Automatically imported from Debian bug report #295386 http://bugs.debian.org/295386

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-Id: <email address hidden>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 06:45:48 -0800
From: Steve Langasek <email address hidden>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <email address hidden>
Subject: reportbug should not ask novice users to pick RC severities by name

Package: reportbug
Version: 3.2
Severity: critical
Justification: breaks unrelated software

The reportbug package asks users to pick from a list of severities by name,
giving lengthy text explanations of the severities. Experience shows that
novice users tend to overestimate the severity of their bugs, apparently
often without reading the descriptions at all; and once they've selected a
severity, the "justification" is just another hoop to jump through that's
satisfiable by picking something at random as in this bug report here.

I think it would be better to either not offer users the choice of RC
severities in novice mode, or to only allow users to choose bug severities
by *description* rather than by name.

Please downgrade this bug, I just couldn't resist the temptation. ;)

-- Package-specific info:
** Environment settings:
<email address hidden>"

** /home/vorlon/.reportbugrc:
reportbug_version "3.2"
mode novice
ui text
realname "Steve Langasek"
email "<email address hidden>"

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-1-686
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages reportbug depends on:
ii python2.3 2.3.4-19 An interactive high-level object-o

-- no debconf information

[Chris Lawrence (lordsutch)]

severity 295386 wishlist
thanks

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 06:45:48 -0800, Steve Langasek <email address hidden> wrote:
> Package: reportbug
> Version: 3.2
> Severity: critical
> Justification: breaks unrelated software
>
> The reportbug package asks users to pick from a list of severities by name,
> giving lengthy text explanations of the severities. Experience shows that
> novice users tend to overestimate the severity of their bugs, apparently
> often without reading the descriptions at all; and once they've selected a
> severity, the "justification" is just another hoop to jump through that's
> satisfiable by picking something at random as in this bug report here.
>
> I think it would be better to either not offer users the choice of RC
> severities in novice mode, or to only allow users to choose bug severities
> by *description* rather than by name.

The "don't offer RC severities in novice mode" approach has already
been tried and was apparently too confusing for our users' brains.
See e.g. 254327 and 255479.

Chris
--
Chris Lawrence - http://blog.lordsutch.com/

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 11:50:04 -0600
From: Chris Lawrence <email address hidden>
To: Steve Langasek <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>,
 <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#295386: reportbug should not ask novice users to pick RC severities by name

severity 295386 wishlist
thanks

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 06:45:48 -0800, Steve Langasek <email address hidden> wrote:
> Package: reportbug
> Version: 3.2
> Severity: critical
> Justification: breaks unrelated software
>
> The reportbug package asks users to pick from a list of severities by name,
> giving lengthy text explanations of the severities. Experience shows that
> novice users tend to overestimate the severity of their bugs, apparently
> often without reading the descriptions at all; and once they've selected a
> severity, the "justification" is just another hoop to jump through that's
> satisfiable by picking something at random as in this bug report here.
>
> I think it would be better to either not offer users the choice of RC
> severities in novice mode, or to only allow users to choose bug severities
> by *description* rather than by name.

The "don't offer RC severities in novice mode" approach has already
been tried and was apparently too confusing for our users' brains.
See e.g. 254327 and 255479.

Chris
--
Chris Lawrence - http://blog.lordsutch.com/

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Not RC, and not really useful to track in Ubuntu bugzilla

[Sandro Tosi (morph-debian)]

tag 295386 pending
tag 295386 pending
thanks

Date: Fri Mar 12 20:10:30 2010 +0100
Author: Sandro Tosi <email address hidden>
Commit ID: bb6cd2481899f4511d391cc0f6fc33019df6d62e
Commit URL: http://git.debian.org/?p=reportbug/reportbug.git;a=commitdiff;h=bb6cd2481899f4511d391cc0f6fc33019df6d62e
Patch URL: http://git.debian.org/?p=reportbug/reportbug.git;a=commitdiff_plain;h=bb6cd2481899f4511d391cc0f6fc33019df6d62e

    remove release critical severities when running in 'novice' mode; thanks to Steve Langasek for the report; Closes: #295386

[Sandro Tosi (morph-debian)]

Source: reportbug
Source-Version: 4.11

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
reportbug, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive:

python-reportbug_4.11_all.deb
  to main/r/reportbug/python-reportbug_4.11_all.deb
reportbug_4.11.dsc
  to main/r/reportbug/reportbug_4.11.dsc
reportbug_4.11.tar.gz
  to main/r/reportbug/reportbug_4.11.tar.gz
reportbug_4.11_all.deb
  to main/r/reportbug/reportbug_4.11_all.deb

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed. If you
have further comments please address them to <email address hidden>,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Sandro Tosi <email address hidden> (supplier of updated reportbug package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing <email address hidden>)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Format: 1.8
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:31:44 +0100
Source: reportbug
Binary: reportbug python-reportbug
Architecture: source all
Version: 4.11
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: low
Maintainer: Reportbug Maintainers <email address hidden>
Changed-By: Sandro Tosi <email address hidden>
Description:
 python-reportbug - Python modules for interacting with bug tracking systems
 reportbug - reports bugs in the Debian distribution
Closes: 221548 230582 286745 293266 295386 498919 524511 552167 562853 562878 564418 564447 564704 565140 567501 568196 572894 573558
Changes:
 reportbug (4.11) unstable; urgency=low
 .
   [ Luca Bruno ]
   * reportbug/ui/gtk2_ui.py:
     - rename Forward button to Continue button; thanks to Matijs van Zuijlen for
       the report; Closes: #565140
     - more selectable labels and use text views for bug replies;
       thanks to Éric Araujo for the report; Closes: #564447
     - wrap text to be 79 chars width in the editor; thanks to Mark Brown for
       the report; Closes: #562878
     - fix focus stealing issues; thanks to Eduard Bloch for the report;
       Closes: #564418
 .
   [ Sandro Tosi ]
   * share/presubj
     - specified the pager exit key doesn't apply to GTK+ UI; thanks to Éric
       Araujo for the report; Closes: 568196
     - clarified to not repot bugs against reportbug in case of GTK+ crashes
   * bin/reportbug, reportbug/utils.py
     - identify the pseudo-headers passed on the command-line and don't merge
       them in the mail headers, but add them to the bug "standard"
       pseudo-headers; thanks to Piotr Engelking for the report; Closes: #552167
     - add a very simple check for email validity, to rule out basic cases;
       thanks to Cyril Bouthors for the report and to Carl Chenet for the patch;
       Closes: #221548
   * doc/README.Users
     - document how to add a pseudo-header
   * reportbug/utils.py
     - recognize also files in /var/lib/dpkg/info/, identifying the package they
       belong to; thanks to Dan Jacobson for the report; Closes: #230582
     - added 'Forwarded' to the list of supported pseud...

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

reopen 295386
thanks

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 06:49:03PM +0000, Sandro Tosi wrote:
> - remove release critical severities when running in 'novice' mode; thanks
> to Steve Langasek for the report; Closes: #295386

This is not what I asked for. I said that, in novice mode, users should not
be presented with a list of severities *by name* to pick between because
they won't have read the documentation and won't know what the correct
severity is.

I think there are real reasons that novice users may still need to *file* RC
bugs, and in those cases they should be allowed to pick the severity based
on a text *description* of the severity level - just not by a severity name.

--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
<email address hidden> <email address hidden>

[Debbugs Internal Request (owner-bugs)]

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# something happened.
#
# Magically this resulted in the following
# action being taken, but this fake control
# message doesn't tell you why it happened
#
# The action:
# Bug No longer marked as fixed in versions reportbug/4.11 and reopened.
thanks
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[Sandro Tosi (morph-debian)]

2010/3/16 Steve Langasek <email address hidden>:
> reopen 295386
> thanks
>
> On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 06:49:03PM +0000, Sandro Tosi wrote:
>>      - remove release critical severities when running in 'novice' mode; thanks
>>        to Steve Langasek for the report; Closes: #295386
>
> This is not what I asked for.  I said that, in novice mode, users should not
> be presented with a list of severities *by name* to pick between because
> they won't have read the documentation and won't know what the correct
> severity is.
>
> I think there are real reasons that novice users may still need to *file* RC
> bugs, and in those cases they should be allowed to pick the severity based
> on a text *description* of the severity level - just not by a severity name.

Every reporter is presented with a menu with the severity name and the
description, for example (and in novice mode):

1 important a bug which has a major effect on the usability of a
package, without rendering it completely
             unusable to everyone.

2 normal a bug that does not undermine the usability of the whole
package; for example, a problem with
             a particular option or menu item.

3 minor things like spelling mistakes and other minor cosmetic
errors that do not affect the core
             functionality of the package.

4 wishlist suggestions and requests for new features.

so the description is already there: they read it, they choose the
severity that's correct for the problem and select it, then go on.

Could you please elaborate *exactly* what you are requesting? Only
show the description?

Please also note you wrote "I think it would be better to either not
offer users the choice of RC severities in novice mode" as your first
choice of solution, so now complaining it's not the right solution
seems a bit unfair.

Regards,
--
Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu)
My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/
Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi