On Sat, Sep 17, 2005 at 03:49:28PM +0200, Ralf Stephan wrote:
nicu:
After spending a little time in the feature tracker, I would incline against anonymous requests, as you will see a lot of "hi, it would be cool to have SWF export/drop shadows/etc." and some cryptic requests without any follow-up with details.
Since you talk about the feature tracker and I was following up to a msg on the bug tracker, those two obviously differ in the level they can bear anonymous requests.
One idea I've kicked around but never done anything with is a two-tiered tracker.
The entry level is designed to be simple, easy to use, and accessible for anyone to submit any random thought, request, bug, etc.
The main level is an advanced bugzilla-like tracker with full details, tracking info, etc. It requires an account to access and participate in.
In general, the entry level tracker is ignored by the developers; by definition it's info is rarely going to be fully baked enough to bother with, and it's going to be hard to follow up on the issues.
However, the entry level tracker is a bit different than a regular bug tracker in that it enables users to collaborate, share notes, and help each other. The idea being to make it easy for them to collect info and notes on bugs, and support each other.
If/when an item in the entry level tracker gets enough detail, has a contact person assigned, enough data for replication, etc. the item can be "promoted" into the main tracker for developers to work on.
Since everyone knows that the entry level tracker is ignored by the developers, there would be motivation to work on improving the items enough to be viable in the main tracker.
Also, it would be possible for developers to bump incomplete reports out of the main tracker into the entry tracker. Thus, if it's just too poor of a report, the developers can kick it out and not worry about it, knowing that if it's important, the users will accumulate better info into it and try again later.
The things I haven't quite sorted out with this idea are: Would there really be enough users willing to spend time improving other people's trackers? Would this delay getting important items reported to devs? Would it end up that for orthogonal issues that everyone just ends up using one tracker or the other for everything? Would this actually stifle communication between users and developers, rather than improve things?
Anyway, due to all these uncertainties I don't know if this idea is viable. But who knows, maybe someone has some further insights that could make this idea actually workable.
Bryce