AndyDufresne wrote:We have a ticket system in place already, 'E-Ticket', located in the Help Tab.
Bugzilla or a similar level tool is pretty different and allows a much broader range of search and management options. What is located here on the Help page is:
- Isolated - it is not "close enough" to the suggestion/complaint forums to be identified as a related tool, if it is even intended to be.
- Not searchable - you must search by ticket #, not by category or keywords.
AndyDufresne wrote:We keep this suggestions/bug reports forum open since it gives people a place to report and get feedback on bugs as they are being worked on.
AndyDufresne wrote:We also keep the cheating and abuse reports forum open, due to the fact that its 'publicness' I think helps deter cheaters, and lets the general population know that we are actively combating cheaters every day.
That's good, but it is a subset of what you can do with a professional tool.
For example with the forum-storage method currently in use, you can't run a query to see how many times a user has been reported in the last year. You can do a forum search on the name, but you are also going to have to filter through a lot of noise in the results.
And unless you are keeping hidden records in the forums, you aren't keeping relevant information directly associated with reports. For example if you wanted to record an IP address/MAC address but didn't want the public to see it, right now you have to store it someplace else probably unrelated (again, unless you have hidden fields, which is fine). With a professional system you can add records that are only visible to those with appropriate access. That would give you an easier work flow and better data coherency.
spiesr wrote:(Historical recording)You can already do that, but most don't bother. Why would they then?
For the same reason that a forum search is different than a database search, relevance of information. If I have an idea on dice and do a forum search, there is going to be a large amount of data, with possibly much noise, returned. A database query on the past feature requests using a keyword of "dice" will return a much more concise result set.
Assuming people don't bother may be partly correct, but you have to factor in the other possibility that people can't get enough useful data out of the search either and figure they'll post the idea, and if it is a duplicate it will get sorted out -- easier to do. So, make it easier for people to get the data they are looking for.
spiesr wrote:(one line entry in a list of rejected to-do items)It links to the entire public discussion of that idea.
This isn't true. Features that are in the rejected can also be there because they are delayed or low priority. A professional system allows someone to prioritize the requested items and address them in order (or at will if they feel like cherry picking that day), instead of being put into a list where they will most likely not be revisited.
Additionally, binding a reason for the ticket resolution with the ticket is much easier - no searching through the forum pages to find out why something was decided the way it was.
And also, report generation allows anyone interested to see a list of tickets that are the result of a search in an "at a glance" form. If someone wants to see all the suggestions on "dice", they can see all the suggestions, their status, and their resolutions on a continuous page. Much less work than scanning threads.
spiesr wrote:Suggestions should be kept in the forum for discussions.
A ticket system doesn't stop discussion, it enables more efficient tracking. Someone can still create a thread in the forum with a reference to the ticket and discuss it. Many ticket systems even have a voting system that would allow people to express their feelings on the issue. The next time the maintainer runs a query sorted by vote, he would see the items people care about the most at the top, which may be different than the way he has categorized other bugs or features.
lackattack wrote:I could see Bugzilla being useful for staff and power users but the forum and eTickets are quite easier to use for casual users.
Its a matter of education and experience. Most people have experience dealing with web forms already -- creating accounts, even posting on forums. This is a community that likes to play strategy wargames, I think they could understand or learn how to use a few forms.
lackattack wrote:It would probably be time consuming to maintain Bugzilla on top of our existing systems, do we need to be better organized that badly?
The answer depends on how much time you want to spend searching the forums for information vs. having it handed to you by a system designed to organize it.
Your user base is expanding fast so more people will discover the forums. Since they are new they are going to post incorrect things, they won't do searches, and generally use up more of your time and the admin's time.
I can tell you that at work, we use JIRA, and I manage a team of 4 people. We have one manager above me and 1 project manager off to the side spying on us (joking). If we didn't use JIRA or some other ticket tracking system we would fail miserably in tracking the bugs in our code and the general to-do items.
Organization is key to success, and the level of organization you need to have when dealing with the several thousand users to be successful is staggering. Eventually the current system you're using, a virtual pen & paper analog, is going to break down in a serious way and you'll need something professional.
