[conspire] (forw) (forw) Re: Your web-site Causes Firefox to Download the Pages Instead of Viewing Them

[Rick Moen]

I wrote to Shlomi Fish:

>> your web-site causes firefox to download the pages instead of
>> viewing them in the browser's viewport. 
> 
> 1.  Your error report is uselessly vague. 

Just a brief note about what's wrong with that:  By failing to be
specific, Shlomi was creating a classic instance of 'CNR' -- Could Not
Reproduce, a conventional name for the closing status one applies to a
trouble ticket when one simply can't replicate the claimed problem.
Which of course meant the report was an utter waste of time for both
parties.

I.e., picture this:  As sysadmin of linuxmafia.com, I've almost finished
fixing a bout of site problems.  Let's say, for the sake of discussion,
that user public_html pages are still broken but I don't know it.  I
receive Shlomi's claim that 'your web [sic] site' blah blah.  I
test-load the front page of my site in a Web browser, it loads, I shrug
my shoulders, and I dismiss Shlomi's report, saying 'CNR' under my
breath and thinking that it's probably yet another person who wastes
other people's time with bogus problem reports because he never bothers
to clear his browser cache and cookies when his browser misbehaves.

Fortunately, I already knew about the userdir public_html problem --
which is a good thing, because Shlomi's mail wouldn't have informed me
of it.  I.e., uselessly vague.

What does 'specific' mean in this context?  It just means including the
fucking URL, or anything equivalently descriptive, such as 'your
personal page on linuxmafia.com'.

I've explained this to Shlomi.  Somewhat incredibly, his reaction was
'Oh, right, you have multiple Web servers', i.e., he _still_ doesn't
understand why his trouble report was completely useless.  Which means
_my_ time trying to teach him how not to waste other people's time in
the future was wasted -- but at least I can grumble about that here.