I've mentioned this before informally, but maybe it's time to raise it again more formally.
I know that somewhere on the support wiki there's a guide to writing good bug reports and although the bug hunters might laugh I try to be as complete as possible in the space allowed. That's not always possible because the space it limited AND there's no counter for it so you can't judge in advance that easily where to expand, where to been minimalist that easily. Why can't it be changed to no limit (better) or to show a character's remaining counter?
Sometimes I just can't be bothered to report bugs. The total lack of feedback about them is bloody disheartening. We submit a bug report and on 99%+ of occasions hear nothing more. Occasionally (twice in 20 months) I've had contact from a Linden about the problem which has always been useful and led to things being resolved, usually quite quickly (once was a new update which understandably took a few days, but at least I knew they were actively working on it so I perservered).
I'm not asking for access to the individual bug hunter etc. but, on the rash assumption you actually use some internal bug-zapping metrics and grouping etc., why can't this be fixed to extra bot messages.
Carrying on with "we've received your report, here's it's ID number" - great.
Following that up with "It's actually been looked at by a person now" would be nice - and if you've got good targets in place wouldn't hurt - if you have a target that within 2 working days it will actually be looked at, or within 24 hours or whatever tell us since you're pretty open about things, and it lets us manage our expectations (as well as complain if they're missed badly).
Following that up with something about what's happening - again an automated type response would be even better. I've not got a background in IT bug hunting professionally, but I would strongly suspect you tend to categorise things according to something such as: This is another bug in that family but we're still working on it, this is something new, this is something that's already fixed and we're waiting for an update to roll out the patch, and some others. Knowing that it's in such a category is actually of little direct importance to us, but it is good for morale. It also gives us some sort of expectation of fixing it (or not), but at least it gives us some idea rather than the current black hole!
Finally, when a bug or family of related bugs is killed, again assuming your tracking system is robust, sending an automated response to everyone who's reported that bug something saying "we've fixed it, look for it being sorted in the next update" would also be good.
You'll notice I've very deliberately said at each point an automatic post - tied in to your existing system. I want the bug hunters hunting and killing as much as the next person. But if you're using some sort of tracker they must fill it in already, and the tracker system then does the rest of the work ideally, letting them carry on doing their main job, but keeping us (the people that pay their wages after all) happier with what they're doing and so more likely to keep on doing so!
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