Suggestion: Add a forum specifically for website/app bug reporting

Site News
#1

For @joet

The bug reporting process on Ratebeer is stupid and archaic and impossible to keep track of both from a user and (presumably) developer point of view. Given the amount of issues with both the site and the app I strongly suggest a dedicated subforum is added here that we can use for bug reporting and feedback, there’s one specifically for the forums themselves already so why not for the website/app which is arguably far more important. This would have the following benefits:

  1. Reduce duplicate submissions…
    At the moment nobody has any idea if another user has reported the same bug, potentially leading to dozens of users all reporting the exact same thing and cluttering up your email
  2. Easy prioritisation…
    Users like me will ‘like’ or comment on the bugs that are affecting our usage of the website/app the most, so devs can concentrate on those first
  3. Devs can give feedback on bugs and if necessary ask for more detail / reproduction steps, give updates on when it’s being worked on, and close when it has been completed

Thoughts?

Reason why I’m suggesting this is because it took me several months to get joet to notice https website links (for breweries, places) weren’t working within the site, during this time I reported the bug a number of times, never had any confirmation or response until he randomly mentioned it in one of his Friday missives. Problem was he only partially fixed it, places with https links for their associated website still don’t work as they are missing the colon, how long does it take you to type a : ? My guess is under a second.
In this day and age where almost every site uses https this is unacceptable (and getting admins to change https to http is not a valid solution). So I am still repetitively submitting the bug report every now and again but have no idea if it will ever be fixed or if anyone even receives it.
It’s a minor bug of course, but there’s been plenty more serious ones that would’ve benefitted from this. And things like keeping track of which pages of the website still have problems with accented letters is a nightmare. Broken stats pages another problem. Replacing incorrect images on beers is impossible.

6 Likes
#2

Thanks for the note. We’ve tried a variety of methods over the years. We currently have a Corrections system, site wide Feedback, mobile feedback, admin bugs and bug viewing system for admins in addition to a new consolidation system, Desk, that brings it all together.

Forums have thusfar been pretty terrible for bugs because of threads’ open nature. A user will submit an issue and others will add issues to that thread. There will also be relevant and irrelevant comments that in turn bury actual valuable content.

Because we’re now working on a consolidation system, I’m loath to add one more feedback avenue to consolidate.

Typically Feedback is the best way to get bug info to us. We aren’t always able to respond quickly to every inquiry. We typically book developers at least 3 months out. We have made great progress in reducing the number of outstanding bugs. Most people on the site should have noticed a very substantial decrease as the number of bugs outstanding was dropped from over 100 to a mere dozen.

I am working on a set of bug priorities for the next month now. If you have ideas, let me know through Feedback!

#3

The regular - weekly - updates about what had been done and what was on the agenda were good. But they only lasted about 3 weeks. It’s true that the site is more stable now but the sense that I’ve no idea whether an issue reported repeatedly over the last couple of years has been heard and understood is not much diminished.

2 Likes