A Quote from Armin Ronacher
TL;DR · AI Summary
Armin Ronacher criticizes poor quality in current open-source issue reports and advocates for a simplified four-step format.
Key Takeaways
- Poorly rewritten issue reports distort information and hinder root cause analysi
- Suggest using a four-step method: action taken, expected outcome, actual outcome
- High-quality reports should preserve user observations and reduce subjective ass
Outline
Jump quickly between sections.
Current issue reports are often rewritten, leading to distortion and misguidance.
Problem descriptions are unclear, with inaccurate conclusions but high confidence.
Recommend adopting a four-step approach: action, expectation, reality, logs.
Includes running command, expected behavior, actual behavior, and precise error info.
High-quality reports improve development efficiency and accuracy of issue resolution.
Mindmap
See how the topics connect at a glance.
查看大纲文本（无障碍 / 无 JS 友好）
- Issue Reporting Quality
- Current Problems
- Misrepresentation
- Inaccurate Conclusions
- Proposed Solution
- Four-step Format
- Human Observation Focus
Highlights
Key sentences worth saving and sharing.
The most frustrating failure mode right now is that people submit issues that are not in their own voice.
So at least personally, I increasingly want issue reports to be condensed to what the human actually observed:
I ran this command. I expected this to happen. This happened instead. Here is the exact error or log.
24th May 2026
The most frustrating failure mode right now is that people submit issues that are not in their own voice. They contain an observed problem somewhere, but it has been thrown into a clanker and the clanker reworded it and made a huge mess of it. Typically, it was prompted so badly that the conclusions produced are more often than not inaccurate but always full of confidence. The result is complete guesswork on root causes, fake-minimal repros, suggested implementation strategies, analogies to adjacent but often the wrong code, and long lists of error classes that might or might not matter. [...]
So at least personally, I increasingly want issue reports to be condensed to what the human actually observed:
1. I ran this command.
2. I expected this to happen.
3. This happened instead.
4. Here is the exact error or log.
— Armin Ronacher, on slop issues filed against Pi