There were assurances posted to this thread and elsewhere stating that this is not the case and that all reported issues are looked at, but if that's true it sure doesn't match the perception. The description of how the Tracker works still gives this impression, as does time spent using it. Whether this is a bit of half-truthing on the part of FD, or just an unfortunate case of perception not matching reality, it really ought to be addressed one way or another if it's putting people off making bug reports.
My biggest annoyance remains the pathetic search function, which only returns hits for keywords that are contiguous in the subject line. It's incredibly misleading, and must be resulting in dozens of duplicated reports. As an example, at time of posting, a search for "docked" returns four hits the first of which is titled "Docked Ship icon showing at wrong locations while in SRV." Narrowing the search down by adding "ship" to the search box filters out all but the wanted result, but searching for any other combination of non-adjacent keywords gives no results. "Wrong location SRV" gives nothing. "Docked icon"? Ditto. Even "Ship docked" gives a blank result page.
And it only searches subject lines. If someone has used a generic title in their report, but used an important keyword such as a star system name in their body text, the search will not find it.
The problem is obvious: unless you can guess exactly what words another player may have used in a report, finding one to add a "me too" or an upvote is shooting in the dark. When you get no search hits, you've no way of knowing whether it's because nobody else has reported it or because you didn't chant the incantations in the right order. So what do you do? Add a report in the hope that yours is the only one and that your subject line has sufficient adjacent keywords for other users to find? Or shake your head and go do something else rather than risk your report being a duplicate that gets lost in the noise? More often than not I choose option two because I can't be bothered using an opaque reporting system that fights me at every turn and provides little in the way of feedback to suggest anything's being done with the data.
Also, this problem remains...
...so even going through the reports manually is more of a chore than it needs to be.
Seriously, FD, you need to take another look at this thing. Between unintended duplicate reports from dedicated bug hunters, and the lack of reports from those who've given up bothering, this system can't be giving as accurate a reflection on the true state of the game as the old forum system did. Only the voting system is arguably an improvement, and even that is still giving the impression -- erroneously or otherwise -- that some reports are more equal than others.
Personally I'd start by improving the search function, but I appreciate that not everyone will have the same bête noire.
