Earlier this month, I decided to do some digging into Microsoft's Windows Error Reporting (WER) system to see if I could figure out what exactly happens when I send off a report after a browser crash. To make a lengthy tale a wee bit shorter, the (non)response I got from Microsoft was less than helpful, and the whole experience left me thinking that there has got to be a better system for bug reporting and monitoring—one that caters to users.
I also decided that I'm not sending any more Windows Error Reports until Microsoft opens up its gates and lets me in on what exactly happens to my report when I click that "send" button. (Call me childish, but I ain't sharin' if Redmond's not.) In fact, I don’t just want information on what happens to my report after it leaves my PC, I want to know what's happening to all of the reports Microsoft receives, as well as whether or not the software giant is working on a fix and what bugs are top priority.
If you've surfed the Internet or even read a newspaper within the last year, you've likely heard of the uber-popular, user-populated tech news website Digg. You may not, however, have had a reason to visit Digg Labs' Stack, a Flash-based visualization application that displays in vertical bar-graph format as many as 100 popular stories on the news site at any given time, as well as a real-time representations of users voting up, or "digging" stories. Digg Stack also uses colors to signify various levels of story popularity.
Here's a screenshot:
Shortly after posting my WER blog entry, my colleague and CIO.com Editorial Director Chris Lindquist and I were chatting about possible improvements to WER, and somehow Stack ended up on his monitor. As I watched the blocks fall from above and the various names of "diggers" float across the screen, it occurred to me that an error reporting system akin to Stack would answer many of the questions I had for Microsoft in a single glance.
For instance, an error reporting system that functioned like Stack could show which bugs were considered high-priority at the time by coloring a column a specific color. Red seems fitting. Whenever users submit error reports, they could receive confirmation and bug identification numbers. And each stack, or reported error, could be labeled with an ID number or brief description for identification, so users could scroll over columns to see which bugs they represented. New error report submissions could appear in the form or blocks that fall from above and land on the appropriate error column, though each submission would need to be anonymous for obvious privacy reasons.
I'm not looking for specific numbers of error messages received—a topic Microsoft is notoriously tight-lipped on. Perhaps a few hundred reports received could be represented by one single block, and users wouldn't need to know that exact number. I really just want to know whether an error that's affecting my PC is being addressed, what kind of progress is being made, if a third-party has been notified that their product is causing system errors and if they've made any progress toward a fix.
The system I envision could also tell users what kind of progress a company has made toward fixing an error with color-coding. For example, if a company determines it needs to address an issue, a column that was red could turn partially orange to show progress is being made. A section of the column could remain red
