Hi Tom,

I would not suggest putting bug reports into a separate category. The present categories apply perfectly well to bugs, and moving these elsewhere would only serve to obscure them. I believe it will suffice simply to use the key phrase "VFP Bug Report" in the text, plus the "Bug" prefix in the title. The existing UT points system also works just fine as a way of marking messages that are either helpful or a resolution.

I absolutely agree, however, that it would be a great help to post these conventions prominently, both on UT and elsewhere. That's all there is to it, Tom.

Mike

>Michael;
>
>That is a great idea. Now we need to make the information available to all users. Perhaps this approach to reporting bugs should be defined on the UT in a place where all members can read about the process. As was mentioned a seperate catagory for bugs real or imagined might be a good first step.
>
>Tom
>
>
>>Here's a suggestion about how we can easily improve VFP bug reporting, inspired by Thread 642946.
>>
>>If you are reasonably sure you've found a bug, you should post a message in one of the major forums (UT, Wiki, or Usenet newsgroups), clearly identifying this as a "VFP Bug Report". Use that exact phrase in the text of the message, to make searching easy. Also observe the convention of beginning your message title with the word "Bug".
>>
>>Of course, you should first search to see if such a bug report already exists, and you will want to take care to provide the same kind of detailed description, references, sample code, etc. that would be expected of you in a formal bug reporting system. If you reach a threshold of certainty that would have prompted you to send a bug report directly to Microsoft, your first action should be to post the VFP Bug Report to a forum, as I suggest.
>>
>>By posting such a message to one of the widely used online forums you will be doing a service to everyone in the community, Microsoft included. Without any additional effort or requirement for new infrastructure, simply by following these common sense conventions, we will all be able to see and discuss every bug that anybody cares about. This will make it much easier to search for information about known bugs, whether you are trying to solve a particular problem, or compiling a list of known bugs, as in Thread 644341.
>>
>>People shouldn't be put off from publicly posting bug reports for fear of embarassing themselves or Microsoft. If it turns out that you are wrong, as is often likely to be the case, it will still have been instructive to both yourself and to others who may be similarly confused.
>>
>>Perhaps there is a workaround to your problem. That will be helpful for all of us to know, but it should not be confused with a resolution of the problem, which is one of two things:
>>
>>A. a demonstration that it is, in fact, not a bug
>> or
>>B. evidence that the bug has been fixed as of a certain release
>>
>>On UT, I suggest that we mark either type of resolution of a VFP Bug Report by awarding 3 stars to the reply that clears it up. For a confirmation or a workaround, only a single star should be awarded, because the bug still stands unresolved. On Usenet, the message title can be altered by adding an annotation, e.g. "Not a Bug", "Fixed in Version 6, SP1", "Workaround", or "Confirmed".
>>
>>I'm not asking people to do something if they don't clearly see it as being in their own interest. Everyone is encouraged to participate in this effort, to the extent that you care about bugs and helping others work productively.