Here's a breakdown of the key themes discussed in the Hacker News thread, along with supporting quotes:
The Challenge of Low-Quality Bug Reports
A major concern is the difficulty in dealing with bug reports that lack detail or are outright spam. Many users shared experiences of sifting through unhelpful reports to find actionable information.
- "The difficulty in reporting a bug comes from the friction required to filter the 'page doesn't work' with no further explanation reports, or the 'my neighbour is a spy for the government and I have proof' reports" - mmsc
- "Listening to users is easy, but the users often don't say anything when they speak. Those non-reports are basically spam that should be automatically thrown away." - Sohcahtoa82
- "Many public bug trackers I've seen are just filled with spam, entitlement and anger, demands/threats, or incoherent fever dreams of very unwell people. Forget about getting logs or reproduction steps. When you open bug tracking up to the public, you're lucky if what you get back is even remotely serious." - ryandrake
- "When I load the program, I get an error" but don't even say what the error says. I understand that most people have never worked a QA job and so don't know how to write a good bug report, but certainly I would expect someone to copy/paste the error message." - Sohcahtoa82
- "There was a lot of vitriol and unhelpful comments that any developer would need to wade through to get to anything to give them a lead" - keyringlight
Potential Solutions: LLMs and Report Grouping
Several users suggested using Large Language Models (LLMs) to filter, group, and prioritize bug reports. The idea is to automate the initial triage process and identify recurring issues.
- "Some LLM that filters out what is a useless report be a useful report would be good, too." - mmsc
- "if you could group reports by issue (by parsing the user provided input and whatever context you save from the page screenshot into some embedding) and then only escalate things when several different IPs have reported a similar thing within X amount of time, I think you could handle two birds with one stone." - graypegg
- "Isn't that what AI is for? To do that for "free" and removing the time an actual person has to spend on it? Separating the spam and duplicates, etc?" - I_dream_of_Geni
User Motivation and Incentives
The discussion touched on the motivations (or lack thereof) for users to report bugs, particularly in paid software. Some users feel it's the vendor's responsibility to find and fix bugs, while others suggested offering incentives for valuable bug reports.
- "I won't report bugs in paid software/services because it's not my job, I'm not paid for it, I'm user of the service, not free workforce so they can reduce amount of QA staff or skip it completely. Give me a discount and then maybe, just maybe I'll think twice about reporting something." - pxtail
- "A clickable link with a form (partially pre-filled) and a big banner that says if the bug is verified I get 10-25% off something AND a followup email (reiterating the offer) + tracking link, would motivate most people I know." - Supermancho
- "It's weird seeing people without computer familiarity using one, it feels like they are blind, they click in a button with a label and a icon, and when you ask todo it again they can't find it(even when you literally tell them the button name), it feels like their vision FOV is limited to a few centimeters, like those horror games flashlight lol, it's my own experience, but yeah, they aren't going to remember the error, or don't even read it, imagine print screen it before clicking "ok"" - Vilian
The Importance of User Feedback and Vendor Responsiveness
Conversely, some users emphasized the value of user feedback and the need for vendors to be responsive to bug reports. The idea is that a collaborative relationship between users and vendors can lead to a better product. Some users expressed frustration with companies that make it difficult to submit bug reports.
- "I tell my customers that they should spend 1hr per month 'improving the vendor'." - eastbound
- "I find bugs ALL THE TIME, and yet, when I even try to find a way to contact ANYONE, let alone a developer, they leave no door open at all. No method, no form, no contact name, no nothing. " - I_dream_of_Geni
- "See, if you rely on a vendor, then you need them to survive. It’s a parasite-host relationship. You need to tell them what you need, and oftentimes they will bend the roadmap in favour of the most demanded features." - eastbound
- "That's entirely the wrong take, IMO." - Sohcahtoa82
UI/UX and Initial Impressions of the Bug Reporting Tool
Several comments focused on the specific UI/UX of the Bugdrop tool itself, including the visibility of the bug icon, the clarity of the instructions, and the overall user experience. There were suggestions for improvement, like changing the phrasing or visual cues.
- "Is the little bug icon sufficiently visible? I'm not sure..." - LanceJones
- "Do visitors automatically know what to do with the bug? You have a tooltip, but do all visitors know what 'Spotted a bug?' means?" - LanceJones
- "Would be great if the bug position pulled in a CSS class or the content surrounding the 'dropped' bug -- to give more context to the site owner." - LanceJones
- "I love the UI concept. Being able to point at a broken thing rather than try to uniquely describe the position/state/path to a broken thing is smart!" - graypegg
- "bug" could be a bit ambiguous to a lot of people. Looks like in a real deployment, you have a little tooltip that says "Spotted a bug? Drag me there!". That makes sense to developers and the like... but those are also the sorts of people most likely to write a good bug report anyway. The people most unlikely to write a bug report are the sorts of people who will read "spotted a bug" as "there is an insect... game?... on this site?"." - graypegg
- "When I took a look quickly, it also shows the "Spotted a bug? Drag me there!" every time the page loads - which could quickly get overwhelming, and make the user wonder why the developer is so certain that they will run into a bug." - gjsman-1000