The article “How to Report Bugs Effectively” by Simon Tatham is truly a rubric on how to write a clear and detailed bug report. He addresses the many issues that developers and tech support workers experience. He explains how it is necessary to include details of what exactly went wrong including error messages, what the program looks like during various stages, and the exact steps you took to get to the point of failure. He also touches on the struggles of bug reports in the FOSS world where more often than not the only form of communication is through only text. You cannot directly show the developer what went wrong, so a clearly written bug report is necessary and preferably has screen shots. He also talks about making sure the bug is reproducible as well as making sure the programmer can reproduce the bug themselves.

I found that the article was mostly aimed at users as apposed to developers. It’s more of a plea from developers to users to help us help them. The language is relatively accessible for those who have some experience with computers. That being said I still think it’s a useful reminder to developers when they are using other people’s programs. There is even a section to address this. I’ve found the article very useful as I have already sent it to some of my family members who often look to me as free tech support, in the hopes of getting clearer bug reports from them in the future. This however does bring up the point that there is no guarantee that users will actually read this even if you specifically ask them to read it before submitting a bug report. However, this doesn’t take away that this is a useful resource.