Comment by elliekelly

It's interesting to compare that guide "How to report bugs effectively with ESR's "How to ask questions the smart way" [1]. They both cover similar material, but the styles are extremely different. The latter is rather hostile to the reader: "If ... then you are one of the idiots we are talking about." "If you decide to come to us for help, you don't want to be one of the losers." It's also heavy on "us vs them", how we are experts and you need to treat us properly.

You know, it just occurred to me that the "How to ask questions" document is targeted as much at hackers and how they should maintain their "standards" than at users who are asking questions. For example, the document has approving examples of "logically impeccable but dismissive" hacker answers; these make more sense as instructions on how a hacker should respond than as something relevant to a user.

I guess my point is that I had read the "How to ask questions" document for decades and viewed it as an objective document, not realizing how arrogant and "gatekeeping" it is.

[1] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Thank you! I’m definitely guilty of mongoose-ing and diagnosing in my bug reports so this is very helpful!

Yeah, that was basically most of the bug template we were filling when I used to work QA at Warner Bros. Games.

    Summary :
    Steps to reproduce :
    Expected result :
    Actual result : 
    Build/Version :
    And a few more fields about platform, severity, etc. on Jira.

Very important to also ask: Which application. Get an URL if at all possible. If someone says 'the calendar program is down', I have at least 5 candidates, and 50/50 chance something I've never seen pops up.

Users tend to rename programs, even give them names of other programs. Our entire finance department can't wrap their heads around the fact that 'Oracle' is not a bookkeeping application. Worse, they are now convinced the new version is called 'fusion'. Oracle financials? Never heard of.

One more tidbit: In the "When I do this", I find it useful to omit stuff that isn't interesting. Does the thing fail if I do something immediately? Or does it only occur if the application has been dormant for a few minutes? Does it only occur using the mouse, or can I use the keyboard?

Get a good set of steps for reproducing the problem, but wander a little off those steps to see what is actually necessary. I've been surprised more than once when something that I thought was incredibly complex only required a few steps. And also been surprised when a complex repro was actually complex (e.g., if I drag quickly it works, but if I drag slowly it doesn't? what?).

...4. And this is my software version and Linux distro.

Ugh no thanks, I'll just send them a screenshot and say "it's broken, please fix this!"

If it's good enough for my colleagues to submit tickets like this, it's good enough for me!