prefill field.comment text area

[Brian Murray]

Similar to the project and package bug guidelines it would be useful if the field.comment text area with text were prefilled with required "keys" as a reminder to reporters what information is necessary. For example, for malone it would look like:

URL of the page with a problem:

This might also facilitate the searching of bug descriptions for information. I've written a greasemonkey script that does but I don't believe the people who would install the script are the same people who need the reminder.

[Eleanor Berger (intellectronica)]

I'm not really sold on this idea, because I think that if we want fields we should provide real fields, and otherwise we should rely on the bug reporting guidelines. The advantage of this solution is that it's really easy to implement, and if it's going to make a difference for Ubuntu, we should consider doing it anyway, with the option of improving it with a more structured approach later on. Another compromise we should consider is providing this only for Ubuntu, and deciding on whether to make this into a general facility based on the experience.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Launchpad could do a couple of things to make the bug-reporting guidelines more visible. First, with a maximized browser window on a 1280*800 display, Ubuntu's guidelines are completely hidden by default when reporting a bug; they should be at least partly visible. (One way would be to make the description field shorter; another would be to put the guidelines alongside the field instead of underneath.) And second, if the heading was "Please include, if possible:" (like it used to be) instead of "Ubuntu guidelines:", the guidelines wouldn't themselves need to start with "Please include, if possible:", which would thereby save two lines and make more of the desired information visible.