ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Robert Schroll <rschroll@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I don't know if this is the proper place for this discussion.  If it's 
not please reply with the correct list and I'll send all follow up 
messages there.

Looking over the reviews of my apps [1], I notice that several of them 
aren't actually reviews -- they're bug reports.  Unfortunately, the 
review system is a terrible way for me to get bug reports, as
 1) there's no nice interface to see them,
 2) I'm not notified as they come in,
 3) I can't follow up to get more information,
 4) I can't mark them as solved when I fix them.

But this isn't the fault of the users; putting bug reports in the 
review box is actually entirely reasonable.  First off, although apps 
may have a support URL, it's not hyperlinked [2] and is therefore hard 
to visit. Other app stores' review systems allow 1-3, and users may not 
realize that Ubuntu doesn't.  Even if it did (and I'm sure it will, 
eventually), reviews are suboptimal for solving bugs.  Instead, we 
should make it as easy to report a bug as submit a review.

There are a ton of bug tracking systems out there, but lets ignore all 
of them except Launchpad.  If a user can download an app, they have an 
Ubuntu One account.  If they have an Ubuntu One account, they have a 
Launchpad account.  So once a user types in a bug description, we can 
create a bug on Launchpad in their name.  Additional comments to the 
bug report will go right to their email, so they can be contacted for 
follow-up information.

I'm not quite sure what the UI would look like.  Maybe there'd be a 
second text box directly under the review box labeled "Report a bug".  
Maybe there would be two buttons next to the existing text box, "Send 
review" and "Report bug".  Maybe we'd do heuristics and pop up a dialog 
for bugish-looking reviews that offers to submit it as a bug.  
Regardless, once the user hits "Report", we don't bother them for 
anything else.  We set the title automatically (perhaps the first 
sentence of the review) and don't look for duplicates.  The user gets a 
thank-you screen, a hyperlink to the new bug, and a notice that they 
may be emailed with updates.

The lack of duplicate detection may cause a bit of noise on the bug 
tracker, but I think that's worth it for the ease of reporting.  Not 
everyone may agree, so perhaps this should be an opt-in option.  
Eventually, support could be added for other bug trackers, but I don't 
think that's really necessary right now.  Although I've been using 
Github for bug tracking, I'd happily open a tracker on Launchpad if 
this capability existed.

Let me know what you think,
Robert

[1] For example, 
https://reviews.ubuntu.com/click/api/1.0/reviews/?package_name=com.ubuntu.developer.rschroll.beru
[2] WTF!