One of my friends (patrick/rigamonk) and I are planning a new site where people can submit their programs and have other people beta test them, and you can beta test other peoples. From there there will be general and specific forums to discuss general topics and specific topics in regards to specific programs you've beta tested. In order to become a member you must agree to a strict license agreement involving general things like no porn/spyware/viruses, etc. Additionally you will be requested to have an online program gather your system information which can help beta testing go more smoothly as people can determine if the bug was the result of a system-specific setting among other things.
Those are are slighly interested in participating (note: you will not be the only forum who'll be asked for interested people, so you may meet new people too) please leave a post on this thread and either he or I can get back to you with more information and updates as we make this more of a reality.
We're also open to suggestions, so you can post those as well!
Update:
Here are the currently planned avaliable services:
Accounts for both dev and testers
Dev Accounts:
- Resumes / profile
- Application storage
- Forum for each app or for each user
- Program creation requests
- Bug tracker
Tester account:
- Equipment breakdown
- Interested in testing certain apps
- # of apps tested (Awards for high tester of each month)
- rating system
I think it sounds like a great idea. May be as a reward for the most testing each month will recieve a program to test in advance before other - just an idea though.
Perhaps; depends on the developers. But aside from materialistic rewards, it'd be mostly recognition, like stars or something. But it's all open for discussion and suggestions are welcome.
This will prevent futures comments from me that you may possibly take the wrong way too!
For once, you have a good idea Mephisto. ;).
A problem I see is that if you have people testing a LOT of applications at once, none of them will get thoroughly tested.
Hopefully our prediction of there being approximately 2x more testers than developers (at least) then there should be sufficient testers for the avaliable applications. What's going to make this site successful is having plenty of people involved, not one of those sites that you can do with a small amount of people.
Sign me up as a tester :)
i'd say that you should let testers participate in no more than 3-5 betas, to help ensure that they aren't just getting free beta software
Quote from: tA-Kane on January 01, 2005, 10:50 PM
i'd say that you should let testers participate in no more than 3-5 betas, to help ensure that they aren't just getting free beta software
because battle.net bots are hot comodity these days
who said anything about battle.net bots?
Quote from: effect on January 01, 2005, 10:53 PM
Quote from: tA-Kane on January 01, 2005, 10:50 PM
i'd say that you should let testers participate in no more than 3-5 betas, to help ensure that they aren't just getting free beta software
because battle.net bots are hot comodity these days
Because this is not targeting the Battle.net community specifically I doubt the main software avaliable for testing will be Battle.net bots, though it certainly may appear. Thank you for the suggestion Kane, it's a good one. Additionally, action can be taken against those beta testers who have a few programs being tested but are not giving any reports (even if there are no bugs it'd probably be a good idea to make some feedback; then again I've never heard of a beta, or program for that matter, have no bugs in it).
Quote from: Mephisto on January 01, 2005, 11:00 PMI've never heard of a beta, or program for that matter, have no bugs in it).
here's a bug-free program:
int main(void)
{
return 0;
}
You know what I mean! ;)
I think, though, that emphasis is to be placed on "hobby" programmers..not so much betas from "Professional" companies. So as far as tetsing to get hold of wonderful, non-trivial applications (say, vmware or whidby or whatever), the testers would be getting a chance to help out people who have developed more simple apps.... does that make sense?
the motivation behind this is to have a decent place for those of us who have developed an app and need it to tested by as wide an assortment of people and environments as possible. In order to have a really robust program, it needs to be hammered on by as many people with as many different configurations as possible.
You might consider trying to partner up with SourceForge. I don't really know how that could work, but they also don't particularly make it easy to find applications that are ready for testing (unless you've already heard of a project).
/me shrugs
Keep in mind though, you will need a section in each programs profile that has a very descriptive "how to use the program" section, written by the programmer. As simple as a bnet bot might sound (for example), to somebody that uses one every day, i dont think anyone that doesnt know what bnet is or what a bot is would have any idea on how to use it. That would slightly slant the feedback from testers. Same goes for any other program that might be out of the testers element.
the amount of information about setup and operating environment, as well as known bugs, etc, is up to the developer. the more info, the better the test.
If you need any help creating the website then contact me.
@Mitosis: ditto, I can help if you need me.
I'd like to do this too, maybe not as a developer at first, but eventually I'd like to.