Reporting Inconsistencies?

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Discussion of general topics related to the new release and its place in the world. Don't discuss new features, report bugs, ask for support, et cetera. Don't use this to spam for other boards or attack those boards!
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naderman
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Re: Reporting Inconsistencies?

Post by naderman »

I don't reply in this forum much unless I see something worth discussing. So if you post your actual ideas you might very well get replies from developers ;-) Many parts of the current style/theme/imageset solution need a lot of work to be really useful. There's a few plans for infrastructure changes in this area for 3.2 already, but if you have any suggestions please explain them. If you don't we will probably implement things in a way you dislike simply because we weren't aware of the problems.

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Highway of Life
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Re: Reporting Inconsistencies?

Post by Highway of Life »

Hey Daz,

I’m curious as to what’s wrong with the “Review Later” status on bugs reports... ?
As I’ve experienced several of those myself, I don’t really consider them a problem as I know those are the issues being reviewed for phpBB 3.2 and such. So why not go ahead and submit them, even though they would be set to review later, they will come back up for 3.2 development. In the mean time, there certainly is no restriction that would keep us from discussing those bug reports with the developers there and deciding on the fix/enhancement/feature to implement in such a case.

@naderman, while I like the fact that much of those parts of the system are going to get a good big of work/re-working, I would hate to see it go so far as to break backward compatibility which would in turn cause 3.2 to be 4.0, which I know we don’t want to happen again and I’m sure won’t happen. But I guess my question is, how much work are we talking here? If it’s a complete rewrite, how would that effect the system as a whole, would it affect it to the point that it would break backward compatibility or are we able to use the infrastructure we have there to build and improve upon.
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Re: Reporting Inconsistencies?

Post by code reader »

Highway of Life wrote:I’m curious as to what’s wrong with the “Review Later” status on bugs reports... ?
well, if you submit, say, 8 bug reports, 3 are fixed, one remains open, 2 are marked "not a bug" and 2 are marked "review later", then you say to yourself: "ok, 37% yield is not that bad, and maybe they'll eventually get to 3 more issues". fine. you are likely to continue submitting reports.

however, if every single report you submit is marked "not a bug", "will not fix" or "review later", then, after a while, you are likely to quit submitting any more reports.
what's the point? after all, you don't spend all the time and effort of testing and submitting just to waste other people's time.
you do it in the hope of helping make a great product better. if your reports don't have any effect, sooner or later you'll quit.

we are often reminded that developers and other team members do not get any payment for their work. although this is true, they do at least get some compensation in the form of recognition.
the testers, those of us who test and submit bug reports, don't get even that. our only compensation is the knowledge that our effort had some positive effect on the quality of the product. if we can't have even that, very few people will continue to submit reports.

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Daz
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Re: Reporting Inconsistencies?

Post by Daz »

Hi,

@ naderman If you post some details of your plans then I may not even have to post my ideas. I don't believe there is anything fundamentally wrong (the more I play with it the more I like it), but as the style/theme/imageset/templates are where people (like me) spend an awful lot of time and effort and even disregarding breaking backwards compatibility (as mentioned by Highway of Life) should have been fairly well fixed in concrete (and working) at the initial release.

@ Highway of Life - code reader has pretty much summed it all up and (even though I apparently have issues the response to this bug report left me feeling 'why bother'. I don't wish to be dismissive or patronising, my hat goes off to you guys and girls as, any financial reward aside, the 'job' is a thankless one for much of the time. But without simply repeating code reader, looking at the situation from the other side will help all.

Daz
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GPHemsley
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Re: Reporting Inconsistencies?

Post by GPHemsley »

@Daz: I just ran into your phpBB.com notification topic and this topic roughly simultaneously, but I would just like to interrupt this styles discussion to give you my thanks and to welcome me back. (I agree; this topic should be split into Chit Chat.) I don't recall when you left or why (I had my own falling out with a certain era of phpBB.com staff), but I do know that I missed you after you had. While I never used your FI styles on my own boards, I did use your supplemental image packs quite often over the years (and, come to think of it, probably without much credit to you). As such, I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation of you and the work that you did with Forum Images.

And now, as TM said, back to your regularly schedule programming (i.e. the discussion on styles).
Last edited by GPHemsley on Mon Jan 21, 2008 12:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Highway of Life
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Re: Reporting Inconsistencies?

Post by Highway of Life »

Daz wrote:@ Highway of Life - code reader has pretty much summed it all up and (even though I apparently have issues the response to this bug report left me feeling 'why bother'. I don't wish to be dismissive or patronising, my hat goes off to you guys and girls as, any financial reward aside, the 'job' is a thankless one for much of the time. But without simply repeating code reader, looking at the situation from the other side will help all.
I think it’s a bit sensitive to take it that way, the reported bug was really late, Gold was already scheduled, they didn’t have a choice but to mark it as review later. Sure the explanation was not super fourth-coming, but that always happens on Review Later bugs.
I would expect the Review Later bugs to open and dialogue continue on those as well. I would say it just came at a bad time, right when we needed to concentrate on the release of Gold and any bugs associated with Gold specifically, and otherwise would have meant time a dev spent on dialogue that he should have spent getting the packages ready, there was a lot to do and nearly every team member was up to his ears in duties getting everything ready. The last thing any one of us wanted to worry about was a bug report that should be addressed for the next release.
I’ve for a long time been on “The Other Side”, my major contributions prior to joining the MOD Team were in the Bug Reporting, I ranked #1 in most bug reports for quite a while. ;)
Many got dismissed, many review later, and many still fixed.
If I got myself all tied in knots over the bugs that I believed were there that they either dismissed or set to review later, I wouldn’t have been a valuable contributor.

I hope you can understand my point of view and know that I understand yours as well, but please hear me when I say, don’t worry about it, as it just came at a bad time. And after-all, it was only one bug report. ;) :P
I’m willing to bet that future bug reports will be taken seriously as 3.2 development is in full swing, and now would be a great time for everything to be addressed. :D
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Daz
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Re: Reporting Inconsistencies?

Post by Daz »

Hi,

@Highway of Life - I don't have a crystal ball and so wasn't to know it was very near release date and my points of view were not based on one bug report, they were based on a general view of the results of the reporting that was being done.

@GPHemsley - Thank you for your kind words. I've been convinced that my presence in Styles support is not a desirable one, so discussion it will have to be;

Having spent the last few years playing primarily with the coding side of things, my needs/expectations of phpBB3 will have changed -- ignorance was bliss...
Whilst the front end features (for Administrators/Moderators/Users) are more than ample for me, not being able to manipulate the power/flexibility that I know is there from the templates is/was frustrating -- whilst I can do much of what I needed to modify the code for previously, I can't/couldn't do what would seem to be a relatively basic requirement -- strawberries without the cream if you like.
I do try to look at this from both sides, so although fixing the most of what I felt was fundamentally wrong involved something like four lines of code, meeting such simple needs of countless other people would have meant that phpBB3 would have been in development for longer and longer and longer...

I am in the process of putting together a simple photo gallery so I can start to do some testing with my own forum members -- ultimately it is them that make the decision on whether I do anything further with phpBB3.

Daz
Ignore the voices, they will get bored eventually...

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