2881: Bug Thread

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Bug Thread

Title text: After some account issues, we've added 6 new people from the beach house rental website support forum.

Explanation

A bug thread is an online discussion about unintended behavior in a program, also known as a bug. Bug threads may be found on bug trackers, such as Github or Bugzilla, on technical forums such as StackOverflow, or on general product user forums.

Most bug threads have a rule to only leave a comment if you have something insightful to add^{[actual citation needed]}, such as being able to reproduce how the bug occurs or possible solutions to resolving it. In practice, this rule is often ignored and many threads end up with multiple people simply commenting that the bug still exists. It could be argued that this, in itself, is additional information, since it gives an indication of how widespread and/or persistent the problem is. Those who are perfectly content with a product have few reasons to participate in a bug thread, so those seeking help will tend to mostly read posts by the others who are, or have been, seeking help, if no one has provided a proper solution.

The exact nature of the bug in the comic is unknown, but there are multiple people reporting the problem (based upon their distinctive profile pictures), indicating that this is not a case of a rare problem where only one or two people have ever been known to be affected. Most of the visible posts just state the poster's inclusion in the list of those affected by the bug, either with a one word reply ("Same"), or a shorthand expression of emotion ("+1. So frustrating."), although a couple have stated that existing troubleshooting methods haven't worked for them, with one even providing three links to the specific 'solutions' that they have already seen and (unsuccessfully) tried. There appear to be no official representatives of the 'devs', or any other knowledgeable users, providing actual workarounds or seeking further information about the problem, at least within this small window upon the collected messages.

Although we cannot see the unreadable timestamp information on the posts, one author (the penultimate, using a White Hat image) makes the observation that the problem has now been ongoing for five years. This is followed by a Cueball-identified user proposing that this group of like-minded individuals may enjoy meeting up in the physical world (perhaps even in lieu of fixing the bug). They suggest leasing a beachfront property for a weekend, which is more suggestive of taking a break than for brainstorming possible bug resolutions (although that type of event isn't unknown). Whether this is Randall, or not, his own follow-up comic commentary suggests that bonding over such adversity is as good a reason for friendship as any.

The title text reveals that the meet-up was actually attempted, suggesting that there were at least some still active (and still bug-bound?) participants of the thread. They apparently encountered (potentially unrelated) issues with an online service through which they booked the vacation venue, and have extended the general invitation (venue permitting) to several other new acquaintances who have likewise fallen foul of the holiday-home service's own problematic implementation, likely having started to similarly bond witin the bug-thread/forum where this latter issue must have stubbornly remained similarly unresolved. These new additions presumably have no interest in the original issue, but have been invited purely for social reasons.

979: Wisdom of the Ancients also refers to an online discussion thread about a bug, and 1305: Undocumented Feature also involves a tech support forum which is eventually used only for socializing.

Transcript

[Part of a discussion thread in progress on an online forum is shown. Each comment has the writer's avatar to the left of the text and small illegible text immediately above the text. Part of the first comment's text is cut off at the top.]

Commenter #1: Same issue here.

Commenter #2: I'm having this problem too. None of the posted fixes work.

Commenter #3: Same.

Commenter #4: +1. So frustrating.

Commenter #5: I'm still having this. Did you all ever figure out a fix?

Commenter #6: Same problem as everyone. I tried the steps in the posts here, here, and here. Nothing.

Commenter #7: Add me to the list.

Commenter #8: Same. Ugh. Can't believe this thread is 5 years old now.

Commenter #9: Where does everyone live? Do we want to get a beach house for a weekend or something?

[Caption below the image:]

At some point, you just have to give up on fixing the bug and embrace the fact that you have dozens of new friends.

 add a comment! ⋅  add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅  refresh comments!

Discussion

No idea what to put in the explanation box, so I just did the incomplete tag.172.69.33.185 05:36, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I was writing an initial Explanation even as you did that. (I had an almost identical BOT-replacing idea. Which I continued to use as I hit the edit-conflict on yours.)

Not entirely happy with my narrative structure. Tried (too hard?) to not re-use phrasing. Either in there or in the Transcript (tbough currently leaving for someone else), I thought I might remark that either the Cueball-like beach-booker or the WhiteHat-like years-noter could be the half-seen uppermost post's contributor, based upon the visible portrait. But it seemed a bit hard to nicely shoehorn in, especially as it could be neither. Though any of those seen could also easily be up above the scroll-windowing, anyway, nearer where the unstated (to us) issue is actually described. 172.70.90.29 06:18, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I hate when I have a problem with something, and when I google it either the solution is behind a paywall, too outdated to work, or has no responses. 108.162.216.173 06:43, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Me, too. Want to rent a beach house and whine about it together? Barmar (talk) 07:45, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Now that we've become firmly entrenched in the era of software-as-a-service & upgrade cycles that don't fix old bugs (looking at you, Raspberry Pi 2b-4b issues), I'm more likely to find a 15 year old post with workarounds that don't work anymore, than any page with an actual fix, when searching about an issue I'm seeing these days. Most of the time, I find stackexchange discourse detailing exactly what's wrong & everything that's been tried, with the most recent posts noting that prior workarounds are now deprecated by updates that haven't in any way addressed the issue. I don't even remember the last time I had an issue I didn't know how to fix & then found an answer online... The "answer" today is usually that 'that thing you could previously do (often something that was an almost innate or arguably essential feature) is no longer doable with modern service-based software, have you tried coding an entire software stack from scratch to recover this one thing you originally started using the software for? Everyone today just pays for several services, to do what home hardware could do 20 years ago, & don't even question why this accessibility feature went away.'

ProphetZarquon (talk) 15:26, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

You really believe that if you got through that paywall there would be solution there? Sweet summer child. -- Hkmaly (talk) 18:42, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I mean, that's what they claim, but I never find out because why the fuck would I pay for that? 172.69.6.94 19:08, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Do you think DenverCoder9 made it to the meet-up? --Koveras (talk) 07:53, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Gone. Reduced to ashes.--162.158.74.68 08:06, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

If, like me, you didn't remember who DenverCoder9 was, here is the link. Rps (talk) 12:51, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

The first time I read the one about "What did you see!?" it felt very biographical... Posting from Denver, here.

ProphetZarquon (talk) 15:26, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I've added a link to that comic to the explanation. Barmar (talk) 17:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

There already was one (but feel free to remove one/make the other double-duty). 172.70.90.28 18:57, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Feels like there's something missing here about the fact that often these threads are actually an aggregation of people with similar-but-different issues, hence some of the 'I've tried all the fixes but they don't work!' responses. Currently beyond my wit to work this nicely in to the explanation though.172.69.194.37 16:26, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Often there are minor differences, or the user doesn't really apply the fixes correctly. Or the software may have changed so that the old solutions don't work any more. Barmar (talk) 17:16, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Or maybe this thread is only about one bug but those three fixes he linked were about different bug. -- Hkmaly (talk) 18:42, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

The most obvious thing is that there appears to have been no attempt to resolve (or lock as not relevent to the 'current version') the thread by anyone official. Whether we see as far back as five years (in which case a whole lotta nothing was done) or several comparatively recent editions (which means a lot of current interest in a solution), there's nothing with the look of a dev/helpdesk/expert-3rd-party. Anyone of that kind has posted before the 'half cueball' one.

Whether it's effectively abandonware or more like an (officially) abandoned forum, there's nothing odd about those few(?) who are still hurt by the problem to have read up whether it's even a valid problem to have (by the software publisher's standards), have read all the accumulated wisdom on what might need doing, trying these things (the "link, link and link" guy did, or so I imagine, with three different walk-throughs that seem to be relevent; the "same" and "+1" ones also might have, but didn't feel the need to say exactly what, especially if those links pointed at higher-up "full instruction posts" that they can be assumed to have read), come up with the continuing problem and registering their interest on somebody (who has their hands on the source/server/whatever that needs fixing) to go ahead and fix it. Without necessarily saying "I tried all the usual methods to prevent one of t'cross-beams going out of skew on't treadle" and providing logs that contain no more (or less) information than some of the opening (above-the-cut) reports alrewdy gave.

Yes, there's probably someone there who hasn't downloaded the latest version/equivalent, but I can't say that this is the level of error everyone is encountering. If anything, I see a high likelyhood that we've got posters here who have actually used the last-version-but-one to check when certain feature defaults changed, have looked at the logfiles in depth, have added (then removed, then re-added from a different source) more up-to-date .dlls, etc. But without any feedback from those who might be able to at least create a workaround (officially or otherwise). It's the kind of thread where bugs don't come to die, they just get preserved in amber. Still staring out at all their victims, old and new. 172.70.90.28 18:57, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

This comic brought another one to mind. I spent a while trying to remember the details, then search this site with various keywords hoping I could find it. Eventually, I found it! It's comic 1305. I came back here intending to link to 1305 in the description. And when I looked at this page to think about how to describe the conneciton, I found someone else had just added the link! It's just nice that someone else thought of the same connection. (Wanna rent a beach house now?) Orion205 (talk) 22:07, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I just had the exact same thing with 979, except I hadn't started searching yet when I saw it linked. Sharing 979 to Facebook was a recent Memory of mine, I might have checked that way... NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:49, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

What bothers me the most is the bug thread where, after dozens of other people comment that they have the same problem, the one who started the thread just posts "nevermind, I fixed it" and hasn't logged on since. 172.71.30.180 22:37, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

+1 to your comment Rtanenbaum (talk) 17:16, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Ugh, I know! If you fix it, no "nevermind", say what you did! I actually had that maybe a year ago, had an issue, found no guidance or advice so actually posted a question. I think later that night I managed to solve it, so I went to my post, said "Nevermind, I solved it", THEN SAID HOW! LOL! And my process too. :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:49, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

It would be cute if the allusion to links "HERE, HERE, and HERE" were actual links to some product bug discussion list. Rtanenbaum (talk) 17:16, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I WAS going to go identify comic 979 and say how it should be linked here, then saw it already is. Like-minded people, MY PEEPS! :) Funny, a couple of days ago I had the Memory of when I shared 979 to Facebook... NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:49, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Until recently there was a webcomic at firmanproductions.com called Moe, with a simple comment system under pages. People developed a habit of writing cheeky haikus, and when updates stopped coming the it was the last page that began to pile them up. Hosting continued for years and years, and for some reason we freaks, loyal to nothing in particular, would check in once or twice a year and wish each other well, maybe compose a somewhat-respectable haiku, and even talk about a meetup. No mention of a beach house as I recall. --172.68.2.107 06:46, 21 January 2024 (UTC)