How to properly describe an error

Describe an error that can be helpful to others to solve.
November 18, 2019
First of all, on behalf of all the developers around the world, I'm sorry that you encounter errors in the softwares that you use on a daily basis. From a developer's perspective, to fix an error, we need few info about the error and we need them to be as specific as possible.
Here's the big question that I want to know about the error you faced:
What's the error and how can I reproduce it?
Basically, you should describe these two things properly:
  1. How did you encounter the error, i.e. which sequence of actions led you to the error.
  2. What was the result of the error: did it crash? did it show you any error message? was there any error code?
Apart from these 2 things, these are also considered very helpful information:
  1. Were you connected to the internet? Did you check that you can access other web pages properly on your browser?
  2. Did you try anything to overcome the problem? Like, re-installing (be careful, you may loose data), logging out and then logging back in, restarting your device etc.
  3. Screenshots
  4. Version of the app/browser you're using
  5. Your device details
Here are some example scenarios and how to describe them properly:

Scenario 1: You go to a screen and the app crashes

  • ❌ The app is crashing (NEVER say this)
  • ✅ (Good) When I go to Book details screen the app crashes
  • ✅ ✅ (Better) When I go to Book details screen by clicking on a book from the "Related books" section the app crashes
  • ✅ ✅ ✅ (Best) When I go to Book details screen by clicking on the book "Life of a journalist" from the "Related books" section of the book "A good story" the app crashes.

Scenario 2: You go to a screen and see an error message

  • ❌ The app is not working (NEVER say this)
  • ✅ (Good) When I go to Book details screen it is showing an error
  • ✅ ✅ (Better) When I go to Book details screen it is showing "Sorry, book details is not available"
  • ✅ ✅ ✅ (Best) When I go to Book details screen by clicking on the book "Life of a journalist" from the "Related books" section of the book "A good story", it is showing "Sorry, book details is not available", I can view other books details fine and I'm connected to the internet. (Add a screenshot, if possible)

Scenario 3: You see an incorrect info on a page/screen

  • ❌ The app is showing wrong information (NEVER say this)
  • ✅ (Good) When I go to Book details screen it is showing a wrong author name
  • ✅ ✅ (Better) When I go to Book details screen "A good story" it is showing a "Jack Hamilton" as the author, which is wrong, it should be "Jack Smith".
  • ✅ ✅ ✅ (Best) When I go to Book details screen "A good story" it is showing a "Jack Hamilton" as the author, which is wrong, it should be "Jack Smith". When I refresh the screen, it shows the correct author name.

Scenario 4: You cannot login

  • ❌ I cannot login (NEVER say this)
  • ✅ (Good) I have logged in before, but now I cannot login
  • ✅ ✅ (Better) I have logged in before, but now I cannot login it's saying "Unknown error, code 111"
  • ✅ ✅ ✅ (Best) I have logged in before, but now I cannot login it's saying "Unknown error, code 111", I'm connected to the internet and I have seen other people to login to their account just fine.