Community improvement: implement proper bug tracking
occam1st
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tldr:
Implement a bug tracking system, where it is possible to search for already raised issues and track their progress. Create a single point of contact for bug tracking, before (or even instead) using forums or contact support. Make the current focus of development related to bug fixing transparent. Have community members raise / upvote most critical issues.
@NianticBrian@NianticCasey are there any plans for this?
Today you can spent a lot of time reading through the App Feedback section of the community about current bugs with the scanner or related systems like the intel map. It is hard to keep track of all discussions, sometimes the same issue gets raised multiple times. Making sure that a bug has not been posted before can be tedious, because no subcategories are present to narrow down the results of a search. Also some bugs are persistent for months and still are not fixed. If they affect all agents, even minor issues can get cumbersome after a prolonged period of time. Sometimes bugs might get lost / forgotten, keeping track will be easier with a bug tracking system implemented. Agents (moderators) can give a nudge if things don't seem to progress, and it is a possibility to give additional transparency in form of a "we are aware of the issue / development is looking into it / will be fixed in the next patch etc." type of responses.
Besides, the community forum is one of several points to find current status of bugs. In the scanner's help center section you can find a list of known issues, which are also referenced on the homepage. That implies an agent will look and find the option burried in the scanner settings.
From there and in case you look on the website, you will get reffered to the support chat. Reading through many forum discussions and personal experience, the support feedback via mail can be frustrating, missing some much desired transparency and more information, which in most cases can't be given for good reasons.
Also, further information platforms like twitter / facebook / telegram news channels are adding to the multitude of points to look, each with its own pros and cons. Most of the time, information is not spread evenly across those channels, leaving seeking agents in a state of unawareness.
Why not implement a bug tracking system, which can be used to look for the most common bugs, for detailed searches or to bring new bugs to the teams / devs attention. Bug tracking tools come with an array of useful input options, so you can get loads of information from them, e.g.:
- subcategories for bugs (scanner, intel, forums, events)
- having a upvote-system can help reevaluate dev priorities
- pre-sort bugs regarding importance (criticality) and urgency
- getting the needed preliminary info needed from the user (version, device, os, details)
The system can also act as a platform to give a preview for development focus regarding bug fixing. Recent release notes in the forum lack the much valued "what are we working on next" section the last couple of weeks.
In my opinion, this is much a needed tool and helps to speed up one of the main issues of Ingress since the release of Prime: getting things to work the way they are supposed to. Having this rather sooner than later will have a great positive influence both on user satisfaction, acceptance for ongoing developments to come and free up some time for those projects in reducing overhead while dealing with bugs.