Both the title and the description made me laugh, especially since I remember that many years ago, a few of my fellow testers and myself used to spend our lunch breaks playing Quake.
While enjoying the humor, all of my bells of bug submission guidelines rang. We know that bug submission is a very sensitive and responsible task, and the bug must be presented in an objective manner, which was not the case here. On the other hand, reading the bug gave me a real laugh, which we need while working so hard. In addition, I can even say that using the funny example helped me identify with the end-user described as not an experienced "Quake Tournament Player", since I suck at playing arcade Quake, too.
We know that humor should be used wisely - to relieve tension and give us a good laugh that relieves the stress. Even the serious discipline of medical treatment is aware of the contribution of humor and laugher to the patients and invented the profession of medical clown.
Should we go in the sterile “BKM” direction or share our sense of humor even in our bug descriptions?
Since I value risk taking, I would say that sometimes we can allow ourselves to go a bit wild with a few guidelines:
- Make sure you personally know the possible stakeholders who will look at, or work on, the bug, and make sure they know you and value a sense of humor.
- Don’t start with jokes before you've established your credibility as a serious bug submitter.
- Don’t do it too often. Once or twice in a project life cycle is enough.
- Make sure your joke is funny (perhaps you would like to test it before hand).
- No need to mention that the joke should not be offensive in any manner to anyone.
- At the end, make sure that the bug is perfect and clear from all other aspects. A bug with a joke, but without steps to reproduce, might look even worse than just a bad bug missing steps to reproduce.
- Understand that following all of the guidelines above cannot guarantee that you will not fall into hidden traps.
Comedy can easily turn into tragedy. Sometimes taking risks pays off, and sometimes not. Do it, but at your own risk!
