[16204] in Athena Bugs
Re: sun4 8.2.9: Stop-A
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Hawkinson)
Fri Aug 21 03:13:14 1998
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 03:13:14 -0400 (EDT)
To: Mike Barker <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Cc: bugs@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: "[16200] in Athena Bugs"
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
Mike,
I think there is a wide variety of expectation levels for
support from Athena, whether among staff members who provide that
support, among paying Athena users, among non-paying users (i.e. users
of public cluster facilities), and even among users with potential
ties to the Athena development community (e.g. sipb members,
consultants, etc.). This wide variety of support expectations may
lead to some people taking offense from the actions of others where
it's offense was not intended (or even reasonable predictable!), and
it looks to me as if that sort of miscommunication and escalation of
tensions is happening here.
On some level, I think this should probably be addressed by a
statement from Athena as to what users may reasonably expect in the
way of support. Depending on what actually went into such a statement
(:-)), I think it could have a lot of value.
In bugs[16200] you write:
| I suppose I should consider it refreshing to be criticized for telling you
| what progress has been made on your trouble report.
It seems like an overly harsh chracterization to call a request that
you pass a vendor bug "upstream to the vendor" (bugs[16192]) a
criticism.
As a biased observer (with somewhat of a stake), my reading of this
was as follows:
1. Jacob's bug report (bugs[16182]) raised some questions (implicitly).
2. You briefly answered (bugs[16188]) that you'd confirmed the
problem, but not any of the implicit questions ("How does the bug get
fixed?" "How will Athena respond?" "Should the querrant sit idly by
and wait, or should he poll periodically?", etc.).
Since bug response procedures aren't defined, it seems that Jacob made
a reasonable assumption that unless he explicitly asked about the
"implicit questions", he was unlikely to get a response to them. This
sort of assumption seems consistent with past history of bugs reported
("squeaky wheel gets the oil" and "if you want something done, do it
yourself"), so again seems reasonable. Jacob therefore requested in
bugs[16192] that the bug be forwarded to the vendor, and asked to be
informed if his request was misdirected.
As I'm sure you know, I'm hardly the best judge of things, but I found
Jacob's request well-worded and politely written, and I have some
difficulty reconciling it with the tone of the response it received
(bugs[16200]).
| Perhaps you have never considered the normal steps that are taken in dealing
| with a problem report.
It appears that a wide array of procedures are followed in response to
bug reports, so it's hard for someone reporting a bug to consider a
formal listing of steps.
| At this point, as a courtesy to you, I provided you with an "in-progress"
| report on what I had found out about the problem you reported. If you would
| rather not know what action has been taken in regard to problems you report,
| I'm sure that can be arranged.
This text seems to imply that Jacob did something wrong in replying to
your response to him. I surely hope that is not the case. Your
response had a finality associated with it such that a reader could
assume nothing else was forthcoming.
Hopefully, a polite inquiry into the a status should not be met with
an indication that such inquiries would rather not be received in the
future.
Since bugs[16188] acknowledged the problem and stated it was "not
major", but did not specify any action, Athena's desired expectations
of the customer are pretty unclear. A statement such as "Athena does
not intend to pursue this problem because we have better things to
do", or "Athena will forward this to the vendor as time permits, but
we consider it low-priority", or "Athena problem doesn't have time to
deal with this", or even "Athena doesn't want to deal with this
because you're not a paying customer and you submit too many bug
reports for us to handle" would certainly convey information
clearly. bugs[16188] didn't do any of these things.
| We will try to reproduce the problem, assess the severity, and decide what
| farther actions are needed.
|
| And sometimes, we'll even try to tell you about it.
In my first reading of this, it seemed hostile and unfriendly. I think
it was intended to be a wry tongue-in-cheek statement, but such
sentiments are easily misinterpretable in email (as we all well know).
Thanks for your consideration, sorry this is so long.
--jhawk
