Talk:2881: Bug Thread

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I hate when I have a problem with something, and when I google it either the solution is behind a paywall, too outdated to work, or has no responses. 108.162.216.173 06:43, 16 January 2024 (UTC)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

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)