A common problem with bug reports, according to developers, is that they are often too vague to be helpful. This can frustrate both reporters and developers, and damage an otherwise productive and positive scenario.
If a report is vague, it becomes extremely hard to fix. Why? Because the developer may not be able understand what was going on (from the vague description) and is very unlikely to be able to duplicate the behavior.
Thankfully it is extremely easy to prevent this from happening -- we just need to make your sure our bug reports answer three simple questions:
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What did I do?
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What happened?
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What did I expect to happen?
Following these three simple rules can take a report from being: "I opened the print menu and it crashed", to something much more helpful such as: "I opened the print menu, I expected the print menu to open, and then the app crashed".
Just kidding, of course being a little more specific is also necessary. So we'll add the fourth rule:
(4. Be specific!)
Now let's try again:
"I opened this PDF document from Jonah in accounting, which he saved using the new web tool, then I opened the print menu by pressing command + P, and instead of the print menu opening up the mouse cursor turned into a spinning beach ball, until I force quit the application".
Now with the specifics the developer is a hopefully able to reproduce the issue and fix it for good.