> disagree. I knew it ;) > - tickets don't get forgotten or overlooked They aren't answered in real time either. But I agree that they are less likely to be forgotten. The problem is that by the time we answer them, it's likely that the poster has solved the problem on its own, or has given up and won't benefit our help. So we are working for nothing (unless the solution is obvious and it can help future users browing the ticket base). > - tickets are a real database that we control, easily searchable using > tools we control > (as opposed to relying on google for the mail archive) I can search the mailing-list directly in me e-mail client. And it seems to me that Google is doing a decent job on the mailing-list, while on contrary it cannot access the tickets if I'm not mistaking. > - searchable tickets allows users to help themselves and reduces > traffic on mailing list Likewise, we could point them to the mailing list archive. I don't think it'd change anything for them. > - having a real bug tracking system is the essence of a > "professional" project I agree there too. But our system isn't working as it should. See below. > Our ticket system has problems (need more of us using it, need a > method for followups); maybe something else would be better, but > email-only is a big step backwards. As long as users cannot update their tickets, the ticket system efficiency will be limited. The users "complaining" about this on the list are countless. This is the main reason why I don't like this system: half of the time it ends up on the list anyway, so we have to both answer there and update the ticket - doubles the work. A more interesting system would allow users to update their ticket *and* to answer other tickets. If any user could help any user, this would for sure reduce the amount of time we have to spend for support. But one drawback is that we also would miss problems, unless we regularly browse the growing ticket base, what I don't do and franckly don't plan to do (because yes, I'm lazy in a way). -- Jean Delvare http://www.ensicaen.ismra.fr/~delvare/
