Re: Report bugs here?

     They have previously stated that bugs should go directly to the support
address. I like to hear about them when they turn out to be mistakes on
the part of the submitter as I'm inclined to make many of the same mistakes.

      As a third party, I can attest from personal experience to Forth Inc's
willingness to improve their products and interest in bug reports.
Sometimes they get very busy and can't spare the time and attention they
would like for this. They are not a huge company and I think they have the
priorities straight. I agree that some sort of acknowledgement is in
order and perhaps this is a bug you should be reporting. Maybe there's an
email problem.

      Helpful advice (this is what the list is here for, after all): When I
have a _mission_critical_ bug and I don't get a response to email, I call.
Many companies other than Forth Inc., friends and colleagues here at work
and at other firms are Email challenged. They either don't read the email
or they don't respond. I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing
I'll ever be able to do about this.

      My friendly suggestions to my email corespondents:
0) Read your email at lead once a day. Really! If you only read it once a
month or when you have nothing better to do, why do you have it at all?
1) one topic per email, send multiple short ones if you need to
2) if you can't respond immediately (within 24 hours), respond immediately
anyway. It drives me crazy when I get a receipt and then nothing.
Sometimes not even a receipt. (how come your email doesn't send receipts?)
A short acknowledgement and deferral is better than silence. Pick one:
        a - I'm looking into that. Ping me again if you haven't heard in 24
hours.
        b - We don't have time to look at that right now. How critical is
that to you? How much money do you have to pay me to look at that?
        c - Kevin (I was gonna put Leon but thought better of it - he's too
stable for this example) is really the person to ask about that. He's away
on vacation now. We think he had some sort of breakdown. How soon do you
need an answer?
        d - we're aware of this problem and it'll probably be fixed in the
next release (as you add it to the list of to-fix bugs)
        e - I'm desperately busy (or sick, or bereaved) and can't read your
message right now. If you have a message of immediate importance, call Ms.
xxx at xxx-xxx-xxxx. Many email clients will do this automatically.
3) read a couple of the endless quantity of "email etiquette" articles.

      While I'm offering helpful advice, let me add one more point. When
you're participating in an email list try to stay on-topic. I'm off-topic
again so respond directly to me rather than the list.

        -----Original Message-----
        From: John Dunn [SMTP:johndunn_at_algoart.com]
        Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 9:59 AM
        To: sftalk_at_forth.com
        Subject: [sftalk] Report bugs here?

        Is this the place to report bugs? I sent a couple to
support_at_forth.com a
        o
        o
        o

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Received on Thu Mar 21 2002 - 11:09:29 PST