> I know that reporting errors can be hard, and I'm grateful for anyone who does. I want to show appreciation for error reports by trying to do as much as possible with the information provided before asking for more details.
This might be coming from a noble place but sounds a little like shooting yourself in the foot. Bugs that can be reliably reproduced are the easiest to fix, and I've found the quickest way to get to a set of reliable reproduction steps is just to ask exactly what the user was doing when the problem happened. They don't always remember, but often do. Sometimes they even remember the time, which can be really useful for digging through logs, which otherwise are too voluminous to be relevant.
Maybe it's a cultural difference. But maybe we could "show our appreciation" for the bug report by just saying so ("Thank you so much for taking the time to report this issue. Users like you play a big role in helping us improve our software"), instead of soldiering on in the dark for 2 days.
This might be coming from a noble place but sounds a little like shooting yourself in the foot. Bugs that can be reliably reproduced are the easiest to fix, and I've found the quickest way to get to a set of reliable reproduction steps is just to ask exactly what the user was doing when the problem happened. They don't always remember, but often do. Sometimes they even remember the time, which can be really useful for digging through logs, which otherwise are too voluminous to be relevant.
Maybe it's a cultural difference. But maybe we could "show our appreciation" for the bug report by just saying so ("Thank you so much for taking the time to report this issue. Users like you play a big role in helping us improve our software"), instead of soldiering on in the dark for 2 days.