Hi!

>>It's doubtful that the "frequency count" will be raised, because the extreme likelihood is that the reported bug will not be reproducible, as amply demonstrated here many times.
>
>I think you would have a difficult time backing that up. It's not very often that someone posts a bug that I can't reproduce (assuming there are good steps to reproduce, otherwise I will likely ignore it).
>
>On a sidenote, please do send the error reports generated by Doc Watson (why name a debugging tool after a bluegrass artist?). In the case of those reports, we most certainly pay attention to the frequency of a particular "bucket".
>

Its not fair. Some bugs might be VERY complicated to reproduce, report or observe. Users just prefer to do not spend time on bug reporting of such kind, because it will take too much time from their side to create a clear steps to reproduce. So, you will get much less reports of that kind. Now assume this report is really critical, because related to the data lose (I still remember how many times I get SCX file corrupted). Now SCX file STILL corrupted, and nobody cares from your side,just because very little of reports and most are without clear steps to reporoduce. But bug still exist, and its not a good thing, for sure.

What you do in the case above??? For sure it is not fair to throw most bug reports away. ANY bug report is if not a real bug, then at least an information to think about and improve the VFP in direction to avoid such reports in the future.

I guess MS VFP team should change the way of setting priorities for reported issues. There was a proposal for this no so far ago, but it seems it was completely ignored. The thread was about wishes list and ERs, but the things there apply also to bugs, is not? Just allow community to see the complete list of bugs and ERs, and let people vote for ER, as well as confirm that bug reproduced, as well as improve the steps to reproduce the bug. For sure this will help a lot. Much like a Test Track Pro application (http://www.seapine.com/). You can even buy WEB version of it and install on the MS WEB server, then allow VFP developers to enter bugs there. It is use very widely to track defects in the application development process. WEB version helps to get defects reporting from the client side.

Why not use similar approach?

>> There is apparently some criteria that is used to decide if a bug gets a KB article or not.
>
>You're right, there is. It's called "there's only so many hours in a day".

Again, I will recall to the previous threads and proposals that were discussed already. If MS could not hire more people for this work, or just have no money for that because VFP does not give as much profit as needed, then why you do not want to organize ERs and bugs reporting maintenance from the VFP community side??? This idea will save a lot of money for MS, as well as MS will be (finally) more close and friendly to the product users. Yet I need to go through tonnes of obstacles till report some bug and know at least that it is reproduced at the MS side.

Why not put a list of bugs on the WEB site application (very simple to create - just a pure table editing)??? VFP Community and developer people will vote for higher or lower priority there, vote that bug reproduced, improve steps to reproduce or add more and more side cases etc. It looks for me sooo simple.

And this approach could be used also for other MS products.

Yet we have a system that is very unfriedly. We just report bug and thats all. MS does not say anything about that - we even do not know if MS reproduced it.

Well, last time you and a few other MS personnel started to do more communication in this direction. Anyway, I do not think this is a good approach. Instead of spending time for constant observing Universal Thread, msnews and possible few other sources of ERs and bugs reporting, just improve the system in that direction.

I know there are many aside issues. For example, when MS says that they reproduced some bug, it will be, for sure fixed, that is, of course, wrong assumption. However, I do not think that it is a good way to solve this problem by closing MS from the community by such unfriendly way. While most of the people understand these kind of things, for people that like to throw a dirt about MS could be pointed to the strong note on the each page of such WEB site where this kind of things are explained clearly.

Mike, c'mon, stop crying that you guys have no time. When no time, for sure, need to do something about that - get more people, improve work or improve something and get benefits from something. I'm getting MUCH less salary than you get (~$250/month), and still should work 12 hours/day for that. Anyway, where I'm getting time to write messages and articles at the UT and other sites??? Just improve something if that gets worse. Let yourself do not observe forums for 1 month and spend time to create a WEB site like I mentioned. But then you will get NNNN months of free time, because you will have a database with information ready to use in development of the next service pack or VFP version.

That is a main point I, Jim Nelson and others were trying to show you.