When should we push people towards suggestions

[zvi]

Can we get some discussion going about when people should be directed towards dw_suggestions, as opposed to Support filing a bug report?

Before the suggestions generator went online, it was my experience that obvious usability problems would go directly to bugzilla.

This no longer seems to be the case. I am thinking specifically of Crossposter mangles username tags for OpenID users, where doing something correctly in an entry creates a tangled mess in the crossposter and Transmogrified: lots of anchor tags not controlled by user defined color where we had parts of Transmogrified where the background was controlled in the wizard but the foreground was not, which meant you got unpredictable (and potentially unviewable) color combos.

I am puzzled and would either like the ruling cabal to give us some clearer standards, or for a discussion to take place among the support volunteers.

Comments

[denise]

If it's something that's not working as designed, it goes to support (who will look at it and see if it does need to be filed). If it's working as designed, but as designed is less than optimal, it should go through the suggestions process.

[zvi]

Okay, but (and I'm really not trying to be crazy arguer lady)

my understanding of how the crossposter is supposed to work is that (with the exception of the footer, polls and, depending on availability, icons), it should be reproducing the entry as made on Dreamwidth at the site where it is crossposted.

my understanding of the styles system is that all of the colors used in the systems style should be under control of the wizard.

So, is there some place to check what the design of a feature is supposed to be?

[chemicallace]

Generally, I go with how I thought it worked and also ask other people. If it's not something I can get an agreement on or there are enough questions about how it should work if it should clearly work differently, I send it to suggestions.

Dreamwidth's crossposter already doesn't make the entries identical. We convert lj user tags and such. Roughly half the people I talked to thought we should convert tags on the crossposter to the actual site the OpenID is from and the other half thought we should link to the DW OpenID, so I thought people could hash it out in suggestions. Similarly with style colors, yes, it probably should be under the control the wizard, but should there be more controllable colors or should they be tied to something else (the colors in question used to be controlled by another variable, but stopped being controlled).

In both cases, if someone else had come along and filed a bug first, I would have happily approved it and moved on. It's not something that's mission-critical.

[cesy]

My gut instinct would have been for both of those to have gone straight to Bugzilla, too.

[mark]

Agreed.