Bug reports from everywhere!

, Will Kahn-Greene | share this (mastodon)
Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts over a long span of time. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date, the code doesn't work, the ideas haven't aged well, or the ideas were terrible to begin with. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

I've noticed while working on PyBlosxom that bugs can literally be reported anywhere. Not only that, but people get annoyed (really annoyed) when you don't respond to their bug report which was reported using a method that I never would have dreamed of. We've had reports in all the following places:

  • on the pyblosxom-users mailing list (I prefer this one)

  • on the pyblosxom-devel mailing list (this one is great too)

  • in a comment on the PyBlosxom main site for an article that has to do with a release

  • in a comment on the PyBlosxom main site for an article that has nothing to do with a release

  • in a comment on some other site (mine, Planet PyBlosxom, ...) in an article that has nothing to do with a release

  • in a blog entry on someone else's site--someone I've never previously had contact with and whose blog isn't connected to anyone else's blog

  • in the PyBlosxom documentation wiki

  • in some other wiki that I've never previously seen

  • on IRC in the #pybloscom channel (these are cool, but I'll never hear about the bug unless I'm specifically online which is not usually the case)

  • sent in email to me or someone else

  • added to the bug tracker on our SourceForge site

It takes a huge amount of time to check all these places--many of which come and go. It really puzzles me why people don't try to be more social and send bug reports via channels that other projects typically use (bug trackers, mailing lists, and IRC). I've been trying to coerce people into a few standard channels, but it's really hard on a project like this and there's a lot of resistance.

Bottom line is that this kind of thing really affects the project's quality. There are bugs out there that I will never trip over that someone else did but because they chose to whisper it into their pillow at night rather than tell someone about it, the bug won't get fixed and will trip someone else up.

I thought blogs were supposed to be social tools to enhance communities and promote discussion.

Anyhow, we can only do the best that we can do.

Want to comment? Send an email to willkg at bluesock dot org. Include the url for the blog entry in your comment so I have some context as to what you're talking about.