Trouble reporting bugs

Ghazgkull

What is the desired etiquette for us (the lowly users) if an admin locks a bug report thread prematurely? I don't want to be a pest and keep opening new threads, but once a thread is locked I'm not sure what else I should do if I want to report a bug.

For example, someone tried to report the invalid RSS feed (along with the required fix!) weeks ago, but the thread was immediately locked by an admin.

A week later, after adding the comment "I'll fix it" to another thread about the broken RSS feed, the admin immediately locked the thread.

After waiting for a week to see if the admin's fix would work (the feed is still broken in the reader I'm using), I opened a thread yesterday asking if anyone else is still seeing the feed as broken. An admin came in, posted a comment which wasn't relevant, and then locked the thread.

The aggressive locking gives the impression that these posts are pissing off the forum admins, which I don't think is anyone's intention. Is there a better place that we should be reporting bugs?

Thanks,
- Ghaz

Aldo

You didn't actually read the thread linked in your locked thread, huh?

Because it reads that the admins of this forum can't fix the RSS-feed. The guy who can knows of the problem and knows that it isn't working yet. Making more threads about it doesn't help. Especially because those who can fix it don't read the forums.

Ramius

I guess if you hang out at the forums long enough, you'll eventually come to understand the schizophrenic relationship we have to the PA Main Site.

The Penny-Arcade forums are hosted on the Penny-Arcade servers, and the Penny-Arcade forum admins kinda know some of the people who are involved in running Penny-Arcade, their servers, or the code that runs on those servers (like the RSS feed program). But we just "kinda know them". We aren't in a formal working relationship with them. We've never met any of them face-to-face.

For many years now, the Penny-Arcade forums have been a volunteer project run at arms-length from the Penny-Arcade mainsite. Gabe and Tycho do not, for the most part, participate in the public parts of the Penny-Arcade forums, and absolutely do not, at all, participate in the administration aspects of the forums. The closest thing we have to a relationship is that there is a liason of sorts who is intimately involved in everything that happens over there in Penny-Arcade Land, and who occasionally pops in over here to make sure we are not letting the forums turn into a rotten cesspool which might reflect especially badly or do permanant damage to Penny-Arcade's image. As long as we don't do that, and as long as we are willing to enforce some simple rules that our owners feel strongly about (like the "no discussing ROM's/Warez/Piracy" rule), we are pretty much free to make this little corner of the Penny-Arcade community into whatever we'd like.


tl;dr: Posting on the forums that the RSS feed is broken is a shot-in-the-dark attempt at bringing it to the attention of someone that can do something about it. We allow people to take that shot, because we are polite. But we don't humor them when they keep bugging us about it, because it is outside our purview, and bugging us about it is a pointless exercise.

Ghazgkull

That makes sense, Ramius.

I'm my case, though, I'm still having trouble using the RSS feed and I'd like to discuss this with other PA fans (I'd at least like to know if anyone else is having the same problem). It would be nice if we were at least permitted to discuss user issues here among ourselves. Is there a better place for me to post that kind of question?

Thanks,
- Ghaz

Aldo

Ghazgkull wrote: »

That makes sense, Ramius.

I'm my case, though, I'm still having trouble using the RSS feed and I'd like to discuss this with other PA fans (I'd at least like to know if anyone else is having the same problem). It would be nice if we were at least permitted to discuss user issues here among ourselves. Is there a better place for me to post that kind of question?

Thanks,
- Ghaz

There's a chat subforum for that -- Social Entropy ++, they have a comic thread where you might be able to discuss it.

Tube

To be honest, if there's a bug and you've reported it and we've acknowledged it, continually harping on and on about it is just obnoxious, and yes, your thread is going to get locked. After the third fucking thread about the RSS feed had been locked maybe you could get the sodding hint.

Tube

I mean what are you trying to achieve, are we going to go "gee whillikers, I better get on and fix that bug now that some guy is really super annoyed about it! After all, I was just sitting on my thumb before, now I'm totally going to do it!"

No. Fucking think. The only possible thing that will be achieved by you incessantly bothering us about the same bug is making our days slightly worse. Think about that.

wunderbar

thsi thread shows the difference between Ramius and Tube verly clearly.

I like Ramius, he works hard, does a lot for us, and when someone does something they shoudln't be doing, he tries to reason with them, be nice, and not loose his cool

Tube, he is just a dick. Someone asks a question, because they don't know, and Tube crawls up and down them like they just posted a porn image or some shit like that.

Ramius did a good job of answering his question without pissing anyone else Tube, why couldn't you just leave it?

Tube

Why couldn't you? If you feel the need to tell me what a dick I am, go ahead and use the PM function, moron. I reserve the right to get annoyed at people who don't make even the slightest attempt to read the threads that already exist about the bugs they're reporting, and both admins have already stated multiple times that it has nothing to do with us. If you can't be bothered to act like an adult, I'm not going to treat you like one.

Ramius

Indeed, I was this close -->||<-- to "explaining" in my post how repeatedly bringing this stupid topic up only serves to annoy people, and how unlike it being a "squeaky wheel getting greased" it was more than likely going to result in the "squeaky wheel getting banned".

I decided to take a different tack in the end, but look at what it gained me. More of the same, "Is there a better place I can post about this?"


The answer is, simply, "NO!". There is no place for "discussing" the broken RSS feed because there really isn't anything to discuss. If you want to know if the RSS feed is OK, plug it in at www.FeedValidator.org. If it comes up clean there, and it doesn't work for you, then your software is broken. If it comes up broken there, well then tough shit. So it goes.


Penny-Arcade.com is not an open-source project. There is no bugzilla tracking system, and development is not coordinated in public email lists and blogs. If you are looking for that sort of thing, go look over here.


If you want to chat with people at the Penny-Arcade forums, please feel welcome to. But don't be surprised to find that this is not your myspace page. We don't let people just post whatever the hell they want. We don't leave pointless or stupid threads unlocked. We are the arbiters of taste here, and if we lock a thread, it is because it is not adding anything of value. If you just can't agree with our judgements on what contitutes "value", then you are invited to please leave. This place, in that case, is just "not for you".