What falls into the "not so much" category? Here are some more examples, almost verbatim:
- It doesn't work
- I get an error message
- It doesn't look right
- The web site doesn't load [irony alert: this one was submitted via web form]
Each of these was a valid problem, but it took several days of back-and-forth with the person who reported the problem to get enough information to even know where to start looking for a problem. Add a spherical earth into the mix, and even simple email exchanges can take days to clarify the issue enough to start looking into the cause.
So what differentiates these from good problem reports? Let's take a stab at the above list to make it better:
- I started at this here, I performed this action, I expected this result, but I received this other result instead.
- I was trying to do this specific action, and I received an error message that said "..."
- I was looking at this page, and it did not look right. Here is a screen shot of what I'm talking about.
- I was trying to load such-and-such page about 7:30PM on Febtober the 32nd from IP address 192.0.2.1 and I received a timeout error.
And please, when you leave an email address, PLEASE leave one that works. I've lost track of how many times I have written up a detailed email message with a fix, a workaround, or a request for more specific information just to have the message bounce back as undeliverable.
One other thing: some people will take screen shots and then paste the graphic into a Word document and mail the Word document as part of their problem report. Depending on the issue that you're trying to document, this may not be the best tool for the job. Word will decrease the quality of the graphic, so if I need to look at the location bar in your Internet Explorer window, Word will have made it practically unreadable. It's generally better to just send the screen shot image as an attachment instead of pasting it into a Word document.
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