We need volunteers for Mantis Moderators

[enystrom8734]

I can volunteer help as well. I have 4 years (and growing!) QA experience and am available in the evenings (EST) to do some moderating.

I've used FogBugz and Rational before. Mantis seems pretty similar to FogBugz.

[simon_w]

Once my Honours project is finished on Friday (so, a week from now), I'll have plenty of time to help if needed. I have some experience using Mantis and Trac as both a developer and user. I'm a core developer for a fairly popular CMS (SilverStripe) as well as some more minor projects.

[lukegb]

I'll volunteer myself - I have time to sink into sorting out duplicates that I find in the bug tracker and I'd love to help out.

[Redman]

I'd be game to assist. Used to be an admin/bug tester for a GTA:SA multiplayer server that tends to have... 200-500 unique connections on our game server at any time. Something like that.

[Causeless]

I've had experience with Mantis because of being an experimental pre-update tester for the game Kerbal Space Program. i'd love to help, if possible! More time for development is all the better, eh?

My name is the same as my forum one: Causeless

[techdragon]

If you still need mods, I'm happy to help. I've got a list of bugs of my own, so I'd be looking for duplicates anyway when I went to submit them

[Otherside]

I would like to help with the bugtracker. I'm a developer myself and I've been using JIRA for the past couple of years. I don't have much time available but I would be happy to help get the bugtracking in a good shape.

[Phydaux]

As someone who put some time into moderating these forums I feel obliged to post here. Sadly I don't have enough time to take up something like the tracker continuously next to keeping the forums in check since I'm a bit too busy with other projects at the moment (I might be able to do one or two hours a week, but that's it) so I'm afraid I must decline.

Without trying to be an asshole, I want to point out it was very much to be expected that the same issues would arise on a tracker as would on the forums, and although the effort of setting up the tracker is appreciated it obviously hasn't solved the issues the way the biggest complainers predicted it would. (tl;dr: I told you so.) For that reason I still feel that switching back to the forums (with perhaps one or two additional moderators) would take less effort and be just as easy.

Jelco

Using a forum to track bugs is the same as driving in screws with a hammer. It works, but it's not pretty. I would have been fine to stick to the forum to report bugs, but it's not without its problems. Your sticky message about information to include (which was ignored by most) is asked for on each bug submission in Mantis, so at least people are prompted to provide the correct information, even if they choose not to. Mantis has built-in file-hosting so people don't have to set up accounts with different picture/file hosting companies just to illustrate some bugs. The search function on these forums is terrible, it's much easier to search and link and organise inside Mantis. And, you can get a taste of what is going to be fixed in the next release with the built-in change log.

I think a bug tracker adds a greater sense of involvement in the development of the game than mere forum posts, which can go unacknowledged (though not necessarily ignored).

[Hessen]

Bug Tracker > Bug Forum

[Guvnor]

Using a forum to track bugs is the same as driving in screws with a hammer. It works, but it's not pretty. I would have been fine to stick to the forum to report bugs, but it's not without its problems. Your sticky message about information to include (which was ignored by most) is asked for on each bug submission in Mantis, so at least people are prompted to provide the correct information, even if they choose not to. Mantis has built-in file-hosting so people don't have to set up accounts with different picture/file hosting companies just to illustrate some bugs. The search function on these forums is terrible, it's much easier to search and link and organise inside Mantis. And, you can get a taste of what is going to be fixed in the next release with the built-in change log.

I think a bug tracker adds a greater sense of involvement in the development of the game than mere forum posts, which can go unacknowledged (though not necessarily ignored).

I'm gonna have to agree with all of these points.

+1

[paktsardines]

Well, my preferred bug tracker's a whiteboard

With this many alpha-testers and this many different skill sets, no bug tracker or forum is up to the job. Internally, they're about as useful as each other. A forum's not good for much more than describing bugs and detailing how to repeat them, and while a bug tracker allows a whole lot more information to be supplied, the usefulness of said data cannot be relied upon. Everyone thinks their bug is critical and high priority Either way, you need moderators to vett the information before it gets to the devs, and with this many volunteers they'll need moderators to vett the moderators .

The real benefit between the two is external, ie us Alpha people. The bug tracker should win hands down for us because it provides real-time information about each bug's status, we can watch progress happen, and we get that warm fuzzy feeling when our bug report is greened and closed.

Don't go back to the forum for bugs, pleeeeeeease.

[PsyKzz]

PsyKzz - Would love to volunteer.

Have used mantis over the last 5 years for other open source projects.

[frenchfrog]

For a company of 2 persons, I think the biggest argument about using a bug tracker is to save the devs some precious time.

In a bug tracker, there is usually much less chatter and the information is more complete because the input form is designed with the fields they need.

To save even more times, have the tracker moderated (looking for duplicate is only a small part of it).

Here a quick list of what good moderator would do:

1) Contact the original reporter is some information is missing for an issue
2) Try to reproduce the problem, formulate clear STR (Steps to reproduce) from a totally fresh installation (this means, configuration file if relevant, save game, ...)
3) If you are not able to reproduce due to system specific configuration needed, verify with the reporter that this is not a support issue (ex: old video driver)
4) Complete the bug report with screenshots, clearer explanation, minidump and crash information if relevant
5) Once a version is released, test if the bug is really corrected

[Hessen]

Seriously guys, you're all missing my point. I'm not saying a bug tracker isn't better suited for tracking bugs - you can stop explaining why it is. And no, I'm not going to explain what it is I did say, because I've done so enough by now. I'm not going to reiterate that yet again simply because you haven't read my posts properly.

Jelco

PS: And however hypocritical this may seem coming from the person who kind of started it, it might be a good idea to keep this on-topic.

Your point was that both need moderation and both have the same issues and you were smug about "I told you so". So damn right people are going to call you out on it because they feel you're completely wrong in your statements. No need to get so defensive, I'm sure with your plethora of forum experience you're well aware other people might have a different view to yours and be vocal about it.

And ultimately, you sound like a bit of a tit

[Hessen]

Back on topic.

I'll help out. No experience with Mantis previously, but I know how to use a mouse and I'm online a lot outside of 9-5.

Plus I make a mean bacon butty.