Adam Herscher @ Microsoft Responds

His post can be found here: On Blogging and Bug Bashes

To summarize: They are paying Non-Coders (the "everyone else" group @ Microsoft) for bugs they find that are fixed.
So.. if Joe Marketing finds a bug and reports it. When that bug gets fixed Joe Marketing gets $100. (at least I think it is when it gets fixed, it would be crazy to pay them for each bug they find regardless of if it gets fixed)

He goes on to say how we are all spinning the original post the wrong way. Look at the original post mirrored here (the original was taken down).

I don't see how it could be taken any other way then the famous dilbert comic.

I'll have to digg around for the original post if I can even find it, but I seem to remember someone else at Microsoft reporting annoyances from Vista as bugs. They were talking about Vista's constant nagging the user on things. (Do you want to do [this]? Are you sure? It might be a security risk, etc.. )
His concern (and it is valid) is that users will simply start clicking yes all the time (like they did in IE) He reported it to the Vista folk. Turns it isn't considered a bug since it is by design. So.. no $100 for him :) He ends his post with stating that real bugs are easy to fix. Design changes are hard late in a project.
*I have not tested Vista so I have no first hand experience with it yet.

Most issues the non-qa/coding group will find are going to be design issues and not actual bugs (since if they aren't normally doing this type of thing they won't really have the experience to find actual bugs).

This will lead to frustration on their part because most “bugs“ reported will come back as “That's not a bug. We did that on purpose.“ It will spiral from there.

So.. I still call pointy-haired boss on this idea unless they take their user interface input into consideration (since that is mostly what the non-techie group would find).

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