launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Lange <jml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 9:58 PM, Robert Collins
<robertc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 3:02 AM, Paolo Sammicheli <xdatap1@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/54652
>>
>> I agree with some comments that, at the end, having the workaround in the description is
>> technically quite the same thing but it's not the same user experience for a new ubuntu
>> user reporting its first bug. A separate workaround field would be easier to be
>> recognized and founded with searches.

Hi Paolo,

Thanks for forwarding this spec to the launchpad-dev mailing list.
It's always good to see folk starting to help Launchpad help Ubuntu.

...
>
> A few (technical) thoughts here.
>
> Firstly, our search is -hugely- complex. Adding another text field is
> doable, but adding a specific search on just that text field would
> make a poor UI worse IMNSHO. So I would encourage significant user
> testing on that angle. E.g. get measured answers on:
>  - should existing full text search should just find matches in that field?
>  - should there be a search facility specific to the field?
>

For the advanced search page, I'm personally OK with the UI getting a
little worse if it provides significantly helpful new functionality.

I'm not 100% sure what the work-around checkbox is meant to do here
though. None of the stories mention it. Paolo?

If we did this, I'd probably be happy with starting off with the
existing full text search finding matches on the workaround field.

> Secondly, yes, having a specific workarounds field would add specific
> modelling. It also adds UI overhead - more things to process when you
> look at the bug page. This can be a benefit or a curse. User testing
> with a goal of answering the following sorts of questions would be
> useful:
>  - does having a separate field make life harder/easier for developers?
>  - does having a separate field increase/decrease users satisfaction
> with their interactions with Launchpad when dealing with a problem in
> Ubuntu?
>

Yeah. How would Paolo & folk who want to help go about doing that user testing?

Some more questions for Paolo, or other people who want to fix this problem:
 * What do bugs without a known workaround look like?
 * What would the result be for
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/NNNNNN/workaround if there's no
known workaround? (it's a good idea btw)
 * What mechanism, if any, do we provide for handling bugs that have
already have workarounds in comments?

Finally, both the bug and the mailing list record disagreements about
whether or not this is a good idea. I am convinced that the
disagreement cannot be resolved by discussion. However, I don't know
what else to do. Got any ideas?

Thanks again for kicking this off.

cheers,
jml