Many people report non-Launchpad bugs on Launchpad products

On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 04:35:33AM -0000, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> + But in bug 88538 (misfiled under "malone"), Jeremy LaCroix says: "I
> + didn't report it under Malone. For the package I chose 'I don't know'."
> + This suggests a code problem, rather than an interface design problem.

I still think this is an interface problem. When I fixed the general
+filebug (where you can file bugs on both a package and a product), I
didn't bother trying to explain what's the difference between a product
and a package. So it could very well be that he chose 'malone', since
that's where the Ubuntu bugs are tracked, and then thought he could
choose which (Ubuntu) package to file the bug on.

Possible progress. From bug 103092: "I just followed links from the main ubuntu page to report a bug. No idea what malone is, so assumed it was a bug report system." A Web search revealed that <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs> linked to the Malone project page. I've updated the link.

I've updated https://launchpad.net/malone so that its Summary and Description consist of a plea not to report bugs there that aren't about the bugtracker.

>
> This was meant to be a Kubuntu bug report, not Malone. Please reassign
> and I apologize for the inconvenience. I was under the impression that
> Malone was the bug reporter tool, but i guess its not. This is a Kubuntu
> bug.
>

This is probably easy to fix.

I would suggest the ROOT page for Malone not offer the 'Report a Bug' option.

It seems that the bug cropped up for me as I could only remember the Malone portion of the address. Not only this, but I was well on the way to understanding that something was wrong as I normally (although not good for a NEW bug reporter) need to file it against a package. At no point was it entirely clear that I was reporting a bug against "Malone" itself as the entire look and feel was identical to the procedure utilized to report a bug against Ubuntu itself.

If you choose to have the 'Report a bug' option under the http://www.launchpad.net/malone index page, I would suggest that the link lead you down a path that allows you to refine your bug report utilizing flow based control techniques. This would perhaps start with a "product" and progress to more fine tuned explanation.

The other option is to REMOVE that button from the Malone root page and more heavily feature the common products to report bugs against. For me, the links off of that root page are entirely small and not easy to identify.

It is _most certainly_ a design interface problem with regards to my bug. Perhaps others are in a similar boat.

Addendum:

I would also consider that the consistency across Launchpad is probably adversely affecting the very real fact that there are MANY different projects listed on it. A basic scanning of the http://www.launchpad.net/malone root page shows far more items than that of the 7 +/- 2 short term memory elements estimation for quick processing. (See Miller's seminal work on the matter from "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" The Psychological Review, 1956 vol. 63, p. 81-97)

I still think progressive disclosure would work successfully as many people will still remember Ubuntu flogging 'Malone' as its bug tracker not realizing that Malone is also used for many other projects.

From bug 109431: "I followed the links from the Kubuntu site which lead me to malone." I've mailed Jonathan Riddell asking him to change any such links to point to bugs.launchpad.net instead.

While I can't remember exactly how I came to post a bug in the complete wrong section, it could be useful for this page:
https://bugs.beta.launchpad.net/launchpad/+filebughttps://bugs.beta.launchpad.net/launchpad/+filebug
to show relevant phrasing for what you are filing your bug on, and to mention exactly what you are filing it on.

For example, where the text currently reads
"Please describe the bug in a few words, for example, "weather applet crashes on logout":"
It should read
"Please briefly describe the bug you found in Launchpad, for example, "Daniel is an idiot and posts in the wrong section".

Of course, I am not a coder, and have now idea how launchpad is structured, so I don't know the feasibility of this. However, the example of the weather applet crashing is rather misleading and does convince you that you are posting a bug about, at the very least, a desktop environment.

Jonathan Riddell has now removed launchpad.net/malone links from kubuntu.org.

Daniel's suggestion is an example of bug 43893.

Diogo, I think misfiled bugs have closed to a trickle, so this bug may be fixed now. Do you concur?

+1 to Daniel Miles

It's exactly the same for me.
It was late and I've written the report to quickly.

Please excuse

Sorry to butt in here, but maybe choosing a more obvious name other than "Malone" or "Launchpad" will be helpful. I could thing of dozens of things that would plausibly fit those names. At least add which type of application it is together with the fancy product name.

I couldn't figure out where to put a bug report for Ubuntu, but Google always comes up with where I posted the bug report. Sorry about that.

Hello, I was doing the upgrade gutsy and half the installation stops unexpectedly and now presents this error

usuario@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Password:
Leyendo lista de paquetes... Hecho
Creando árbol de dependencias... Hecho
Tal vez quiera ejecutar `apt-get -f install' para corregirlo.
Los siguientes paquetes tienen dependencias incumplidas:
  alacarte: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  aptitude: Depende: libapt-pkg-libc6.3-6-3.11 pero no es instalable
  bicyclerepair: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  bittornado: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  deskbar-applet: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  dpkg: Rompe: aptitude (< 0.4.6.1-1ubuntu2) pero 0.4.0-5ubuntu3 está instalado
  gdebi: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  gimp-python: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  gnome-menus: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  hplip: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  kde-guidance: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  libmetacity0: Depende: metacity-common (>= 1:2.20) pero no está instalado
                Depende: metacity-common (< 1:2.21) pero no está instalado
  pykdeextensions: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-adns: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-cddb: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-clientcookie: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-crypto: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-egenix-mxproxy: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-egenix-mxstack: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-egenix-mxtexttools: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-egenix-mxtools: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-epydoc: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-eunuchs: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-examples: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-gadfly: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-gd: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-genetic: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-geoip: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-gmenu: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-htmlgen: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-htmltmpl: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-id3lib: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-imaging: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-imaging-sane: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-jabber: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-kjbuckets: Depende: python (< 2.5) pero 2.5.1-1ubuntu2 está instalado
  python-ld...

Renamed "Launchpad" to "Launchpad itself" to see if that helps.

As suggested by Daniel Miles, I've just added bug-reporting guidelines for Launchpad itself and for Launchpad Bugs.

I think the number of mistaken reports has decreased, though I have no stats on this. There's not really any more I can do without either user testing or referrer logs to reveal causes of the problem.

It wouldn't fix the root cause, but it would help if the main heading on <https://launchpad.net/launchpad/+filebug> said not just just "Report a bug", but "Report a bug about Launchpad itself". [Originally suggested by Curtis Hovey.]

This probably won't help, but... Someone on IRC gave me the following link to file a bug for the problem I was seeing:

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/bugs/+filebug

I don't know where they got that link.

That's where the "Report a bug" button on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ leads to. But the form defaults to reporting a bug on the Ubuntu distribution, and even choosing "Project" and leaving the project field blank returns an error as it should. So I don't see how that could lead people to choosing the Launchpad project.

Eureka! I just got Gerry Carr to show me the exact steps he'd followed in reporting bug 302866 about OpenOffice.org under the "launchpad" project.
1. He went to <http://www.launchpad.net/>, which redirected to <https://edge.launchpad.net/> because he is in the beta team.
2. He clicked "Bugs".
3. At <https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/> he searched for "open office", got a list of results, and saw that none of them were the bug he'd experienced.
4. He looked for a "Report a bug" button at the bottom of the page, and didn't find it.
5. He scrolled back up to the top of the page, and ... clicked the @#$% "Please report all bugs" link in the edge.launchpad.net banner.
6. At <https://edge.launchpad.net/launchpad/+filebug> (which gives no indication that it's for bugs about Launchpad itself), entered his bug report.

We can fix this cause by some or all of:
1. removing people from the beta team who are not actually active in reporting bugs about Launchpad itself;
3. adding a "Report a bug" button to the end of Bugs search result pages (byg 162271);
5. making the "Please report all bugs" link less prominent, and/or rewording it so that it more obviously refers to Launchpad itself;
6. Change "Report a bug" to "Report a bug about Launchpad itself", as suggested above by Curtis Hovey.

QA team practice has been to ask people in misfiled bug reports to comment in this bug report if they can explain how it happened. Therefore, we can tell whether this is the only cause of the problem by:
a. querying for the list of all bug reports that contain a comment mentioning "bug 88818", AND are not open for any Launchpad project
b. calculating what proportion of those bug reports were reported by someone in the beta team.

From bug 317207: "The difference of reporting bugs for Launchpad itself and for Ubuntu was not very clear for me during categorizing the bug. I guess I didn't pay attention, first bug report."

On reporting bug 402186, I too clicked on the "Please report all bugs link, thinking it would pertain to the kde edge thing, I was supposed to file against. Sorry for the inconvenience :-$

The same as Matt #21 there was no clear indication , i thought i was lodging a bug report for ubuntu. there was no menu that I notice to select Report bugs for ubuntu. Sorry for the trouble, and thank you for re-diverting my bug to the correct trouble ticket que.

First I tried to use apport for this bug, but because the package belongs to a PPA, it told me to file the bug at launchpad. At lauchpad the same happened to me: I thought I'm reporting a bug to Ubuntu. I started the report by clicking on "Please report all bugs" from https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net, because there is no other button to start a report. Now I see, that it was my fault, because I didn't notice that this button belongs to Launchpad - sorry for that. As it seems that many people run into this trap, you should reconsider optimizing the UI.

I tried to submit a bug (for ubuntu) but I had difficulty finding the submit option.
I someone could make that simple and straightforward it would be great.

I am by no means an expert in usability but when I try to find something I don't give up that easily. If I would give up, my bug wouldn't be submitted.

As a conclusion: Make bug reporting easy, make a lot of links to direct us to the right place to report bugs.

I also suggest that an "ARE YOU SURE this is a bug that AFFECTS UBUNTU/LAUNCHPAD/ETC ?" dialog/question should be asked before actually submitting the bug.

I think mpt found the primary cause, we see very few ubuntu bugs in /launchpad now.