Please read: Wine(HQ) needs a reorganization (AppDB, Bugzilla, etc.)

[S. Schauenburg]

OK, but I mean (don't hit me for this) take a look at Cedega. They
have a forum and a wiki and have loads of user input. This generates
(inter)activity of users and 'promotes' the application in a certain
way, people like to tell other people something finally works :-)

5. First you need to search for a bug. A normal user wouldn't know
what things to select and would need to 'guess' where to fill in the
keywords etc. The search form looks threatening/scary, so it needs to
be simplified into (for example) keyword and wine version.
With the bug submission page I wouldn't know what to fill in at
"Component" and "Priority". And there's no real place to 'attach' a
error report/log to (for example a +seh debug channel)

By the way, I hate the AppDB comments/summarize where people put a
error log or something into the comment and/or the summary (under what
doesn't work).... This clearly states that people aren't using
bugzilla. So if we (Wine) would be a bit more user-friendly I guess it
would get the ball rolling.
Offtopic: I myself would volunteer to be a moderator on the forum.


On 1/9/06, James Hawkins <truiken at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/9/06, S. Schauenburg <s.schauenburg at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Back onto the main topic. Remarks made:
> > 1. AppDB needs a revamp. Maybe drop the maintainers (those things just
> > need to be set by developers only). Just have a look at the activity
> > of all the maintainers in the last year. **Read on for suggestions to
> > drop the AppDB.
> >
>
> What is the point of dropping maintainers?  Activity is always
> appreciated, but for most apps it doesn't take much.  It either works
> out of the box, or the status doesn't really change much over the
> releases.  Simply putting up a HOWTO is the most some maintainers need
> to do for an app.  The maintainer doesn't need to report back to the
> appdb every release to say no regressions have occurred.
>
> > 2. Create a Wine forum. This solves the problem of users asking the
> > same questions over and over again. Here also the "comments" of the
> > AppDB could be centralized (because most of them aren't really
> > comments)
> >
>
> The AppDB comments need to stay where they are.  Each comment is
> specific to a particular app and only shows up on that app's page.  We
> already have wine-users, bugzilla, and the appdb for users to
> communicate about wine.  Adding a forum would spread ourselves too
> thin.
>
> > 3. With a forum in place, the user-mailing list could be dropped and
> > maybe also even the devel-mailing list.
> >
>
> hehe that'll never happen.
>
> > 4. Create a Wine Wiki, instead of the AppDB. Only certain developers
> > (or maybe users) can set/edit certain pages. Then also howto's could
> > be inserted here.
> >
>
> wiki.winehq.org
>
> > 5. It's too difficult for users to add a bugreport. Either create a
> > small program/app which does it for the user (like "Submit this
> > bugreport" *click*) and you're done. The other option is to create a
> > simplified method for searching and inserting a bug report, because
> > from a users view, there are too many options. (and probably the user
> > wouldn't even know what to click on. Don't forget to give the users
> > the option to 'add' a file with certain 'debug channels' (which ones?
> > only +seh?)
> >
>
> I don't see how a program would make submitting bugs easier.  I'm
> guessing you're thinking about a crash reporter, which would report a
> bug with the crash info/backtrace etc, but that would just flood the
> bugzilla with duplicate crash-only bugs.  I'm curious as to what
> user's find hard about submitting bug reports.  If you know, please
> post the issues here.
>
> > 6. Users need to know that if they submit a bug report (when it's
> > simplified) that it actually HELPS you, the developers. So it's "Help
> > us, help you".
> >
>
> I agree.
>
> --
> James Hawkins
>