This 기사 describes two different kinds of feedback to the 팬팝 staff that are often confused for one another, and was last edited on 28 October 2008.

Feedback on the web site
Like any commercial software enterprise, web sites provide a product to their customers. In Fanpop's case, the product is a great site for joining together with other 팬 of topics that interest 당신 in order to share quality content and make friends. But as with any product, feedback is very important to both maintain and improve the product. But feedback for maintaining the site is fundamentally different than feedback on improving 또는 changing the site. In general, feedback on the maintenance of the site is either praise 또는 bug reports, while feedback on changing the site tends to be suggestions for new 또는 enhanced features. While these are both very important, they are also very different types of feedback. Appropriately, there are very different ways for providing those two types of feedback.

What is a bug?
A bug is what 당신 call something that is broken in a piece of software. If it doesn't work as advertised, then it's a bug. The term originated in the earliest, mechanical days of computing, when a small flaw, bit of dust 또는 even a small crawling thing could cause a circuit short, obscure a 펀치 card 또는 otherwise tangle a mechanism. Unexpected problems came to be referred to as "bugs", and the term continued into the days when programs evolved into code stored on magnetic media, even though the reference implies some unpredictable outside interference rather than problems with the programmer's design.

Note: this does not include broken 링그 on Fanpop. Those are just expired URLs, generally, and not a problem with the site's application. If 당신 encounter a broken link on Fanpop, link.

But if the functioning of the site is broken, 또는 just behaves inconsistently, then that's a bug.

Some examples of bugs that have appeared on 팬팝 (and have since been fixed 또는 resolved 의해 the attentive staff):
* all 업데이트 shown in "My Updates" were videos
* clicking "prev" on a page of results would always return the user to the first page of results
* the form for uploading 비디오 wouldn't submit
* an user's list of spots overlapped with graphical elements on the user's 프로필 page
* sometimes 이미지 would load on a page, and other times blank spaces would appear where the 이미지 were supposed to load (an example of inconsistent behavior)

What is a suggestion?
The distinction between a bug and a suggestion/request for enhancement may not be clear. In general, if 당신 see something that could be improved, but which works as it is, then that's a suggestion, not a bug. Put another way, a suggestion is anything 당신 feel should work differently on Fanpop.

BUGS
Software bugs appear virtually every time a change is made to software code, though they may not be immediately obvious. If 당신 believe that 당신 have encountered a bug, there are two steps to follow.

First, check to see that there isn't a problem on your computer that may be causing the issue. If there isn't a problem, then secondly 당신 need to 신고 the bug.

Checking your own system
I'm not going to go into detailed instructions on how to troubleshoot problems for every combination of Operating System and web browser - that sort of troubleshooting is what I do for work - but I will give some general tips as to the sort of things 당신 should check before reporting a bug.

I: Check to see if the problem is reproducible
당신 visit Fanpop, and something weird happens. Say, for instance, all the 비디오 in a given club disappear/become invisible. Before 당신 run off to 제출하기 a bug report, try shutting down your browser, restart it, and reload the particular page. Is the problem still there? If the 비디오 magically reappear, it's likely to not be a bug on Fanpop, but rather a problem with that session of your web browser.

II: Check to see if the problem is specific to Fanpop
For another example, let's say 당신 visit 팬팝 and all the text is green. Before 당신 제출하기 a bug report, try going to another web site. If text on other web sites look suspiciously verdant as well, then it's likely to be a problem with your browser settings and not a 팬팝 bug.

III: Check to see if the problem exists in multiple browsers and/or operating systems
This is the dream one for people who run web sites. If 당신 have another web browser installed on your system, try reproducing the problem in a different web browser. For example, 당신 use Firefox as your browser, and 당신 notice that all the 이미지 in a given club appear to be broken. Before filing a bug report, 당신 launch the Opera browser (or Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, et cetera) and load the same club. If the 이미지 appear broken in both browsers, it's much 더 많이 likely to be a 팬팝 bug.

Similarly, if 당신 can test the bug in multiple operating systems (if 당신 can test it on a linux machine and a Max OSX machine, for example), that's good to try, too.

Reporting a bug
Once 당신 have done some simple checking and confirmed that the problem does not seem to be on your end, you're ready to 신고 a bug. How do 당신 do it?

First, scroll to the bottom of any page on the 팬팝 web site. There you'll find a bunch of links, and one of them is link. Click that. You'll be presented with a form with three fields: a pull-down menu to select the reason for your message, a place to put your e-mail address, and a larger box for 글쓰기 your message. For a bug report, it's important that 당신 fill out all three fields. First, select "found a bug" in the pull-down menu. Second, enter your e-mail address in the "E-mail" field. If the 팬팝 staff examine your 신고 and have questions, they'll need to be able to contact 당신 for further details about the problem(s) you've experienced. Third, 당신 must describe the bug precisely.
Here's a little form for reporting a bug, which 당신 can copy, paste into the form, and then fill out as completely as 당신 can:

******************
summary of problem:
날짜 experienced:
time experienced:
browser(s):
operating system(s):
URL:
What exactly did I do to experience the problem:

******************

For "summary of problem", write a single sentence that describes the bug, and try to be as specific as 당신 can. In other words, rather than 글쓰기 "site not working", try to describe what precisely isn't working, such as "editing my 이미지 in the Hawaii spot not working". Having a descriptive summary can help the staff quickly figure out if this is a bug they already know, 또는 a new one.

For the "date" and "time", put when 당신 experienced the problem. Knowing when the problem happened can help the staff narrow down such things in the logs of site activity, and can make it easier to discover that there was a problem with a given server, a particularly high level of site traffic, 또는 other unusual occurrence that might have caused the problem.

For "browser(s)" and "operating system(s)" put all the browsers and operating systems which 당신 tried and for which the problem still persisted. This again helps the staff, in some cases, to determine whether the problem is a known one 또는 not, as well as helping them to reproduce the problem. If you're using Safari and the staff is all using Firefox, it will take them a long time to discover the problem if it doesn't appear in Firefox and 당신 neglect to provide which browser 당신 used.

URL: This is probably the most important thing that is left out of most bug reports, in general. 당신 need to tell where 당신 saw the problem, with a full, absolute URL, including the link 또는 link

What exactly did I do: Here 당신 need to provide a step-by-step account of what 당신 were doing to experience the problem. This is important in two respects: first, that it's clear to the staff what the problem is and how to recreate it, and second, that, in walking through the steps a 초 time, 당신 may discover that 당신 made some small mistake at some point in the process, and that nothing is actually broken after all.

The 팬팝 staff are VERY motivated to fix bugs with the site, as 당신 might imagine. But they are not omniscient (no matter what anyone says to the contrary). This means that if 당신 write about a problem 당신 had in a club's forum, it will almost certainly not be seen 의해 the staff. So I repeat: do not 신고 bugs in a club's forum. Do not send a private message to your 가장 좋아하는 staff member - that also can take a while to be seen, and chances are that the person who will fix the bug is not the person 당신 chose to send the message. Use the link link
to 신고 all bugs/problems 당신 find with the site.

SUGGESTIONS
The 팬팝 staff has provided a 포럼 for users to provide feature requests for the site, appropriately called link. If 당신 have a suggestion for how the site could change/be improved, that 포럼 is the appropriate place to put it. For example, if 당신 think your 프로필 should display a picture from your 프로필 gallery at 랜덤 each time it is loaded, you'd describe that in a post to the "Suggestions and Ideas" forum. The 팬팝 staff periodically goes through the 포럼 to see if there are any good ideas that can be implemented easily, 또는 great ideas that the site just has to have. Note, however, that posting a request there does not in any way mean that it will be implemented. It's just the right place to put it. Being publicly 게시됨 also has the advantage that other users can chime in to support your idea, to refine it, 또는 to clarify it.

SUMMARY
Thus, to reiterate: suggestions are ideas 당신 have that change how the site works, bugs are problems where the site isn't working. Suggestions get 게시됨 to the link forum, bugs get 게시됨 via the link link.