I agree completely. It often seems a waste of time doing extended testing and typing up a detailed bug report for it to just be lost in the shuffle even after you have reported it several times.
We really appreciate your reports. I know it seems a little messy sometimes. On our side, a single problem, reported by one user doesn't always get an immediate response. We look for multiple users reporting the same problem. We also pay special attention to "big" problems.
I can imagine that this may be frustrating from your point of view, but there is always a constant level of background noise that is related to user errors, bad hardware or drivers, bugs in other software, etc. The "Weird Problems" thread is a long list of these kinds of problems.
Then there are reliable reports from knowledgable users, and there are others.
And there are picky reports from fastidious users. Some are important. Some are not.
A well organized database like Bugzilla masks a lot of this, in my opinion. And it feels like a to do list, which we already have. We've worked with these kinds of databases when we've done work for corporate customers. They (the databases) aren't nice.
Another factor is who we're working for. Some users can be very verbose, pointing out flaws in a troubled voice. Others provide crisp reports that make it easy to find and fix the problem. The latter kind jump to the head of the queue. This is especially true when it's someone who has given their time generously to other users who needed help.
Just to be clear, none of this applies to you, Craig. I'm just trying to explain why we like our current system.