No telemetry in the Rust compiler: metrics without betraying user privacy
Editing this to make it clear: the article proposes local collection that could later be submitted.<p>This is the right path!  Lots of manual submission processes can use this to improve data and streamline stuff, and keeping it local solves nearly all privacy concerns.<p>But nothing manual will ever get good submission rates unless it&#x27;s <i>zero</i> effort, because that effort stands <i>directly</i> in the path of people&#x27;s actual goals when they hit an error.  It&#x27;s the worst possible time to ask for something.<p>---<p>&gt;<i>People saw ICEs on nightly and didn’t report them. Maybe they thought they were already fixed, maybe they didn’t know how to report them. Whatever the reason, nightly and beta failed to be an effective canary.</i><p>Unless you make it trivial, you&#x27;re asking for a lot from people.<p>I can&#x27;t speak to Rust in particular[1], but it&#x27;s <i>VERY</i> common for &quot;please report this issue! [link]&quot; to be met with a login wall, long list of requirements and metadata requested, asks for detailed lists of what you did and how it&#x27;s relevant and what you expected and...<p>yeah, of course people don&#x27;t usually report these issues.<p>They rightfully realize it&#x27;s asking for a major time investment both <i>right now</i> (presumably they were trying to do a thing and would prefer to <i>continue doing the thing</i> rather than learning your reporting system) and <i>in the future</i> (questions for further info on bug reports are common).<p>Make it as easy as the telemetry you want to add, and it sometimes actually happens.  i.e. no login, as near to zero effort as is possible, gather all information for them, anonymize it for them, etc.  If you can do it automatically, you have trivially proven that you can also do it manually, so <i>do that</i>.<p>Give people a pre-filled link with a one-click submit and an optional &quot;contact me at [email]&quot; field.<p>---<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rust-lang&#x2F;rust&#x2F;issues&#x2F;93701">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rust-lang&#x2F;rust&#x2F;issues&#x2F;93701</a> implies they do this too.  They made or already had a github account, have run multiple commands to gather info, filled in a templated text field by hand, <i>and then they&#x27;re asked to make a minimal reproduction and check if it still exists in nightly</i>?  Is it any surprise at all that people do not usually do this?