Where is Alexander Larsson (Nautilus bug)?

[Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak]

>     Unfortunately, qualifying bug reports (finding dupes, going back to the
>     reporter for missing information) can only be done by people who know
>     exactly what real problems are and what's needed to resolve them.
> 
> This is simply untrue. I am currently about halfway through a bug triage 
> of all Fedora 7 kernel bugs and am doing so solely on the basis of one 
> page from the wiki which the kernel team put together. I know nothing of 
> kernel code but I do know having had a few pointers from people in the 
> know what information to request under what circumstances. If I can do 
> that for the kernel I'm sure the same goes for any application.

Exactly. If you are one of those people who wants to help, but isn't a 
good programmer, then bug triaging is a great way to help! It's also a 
good way to start learning the code and open-source methods, if you are 
interested in coding (even small patches help)!

My programming skills are pretty mediocre, but I've closed 1000+ bugs in 
the gnome bugzilla in the past year (mostly by focusing on one 
particular area of interest).

Interested volunteers should start here:

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/bugsquad/

Non-programmers can also help with translation and documentation, among 
other things:

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gdp/


> I think you just need to dive right into bugzilla and whatever component 
> interests you then start with that. Bug triage is quite rewarding and 
> people actually feel a little loved. Surely there is nothing like the 
> hurt and pain of an un-answered bug report?

And if you can't do that... then at least make sure that your pet-peeve 
bugs are correctly reported in the upstream bugzilla (unless it's a 
Fedora-specific bug) with complete stacktraces and steps-to-reproduce, 
so that the developers have a good starting point. And if bug-buddy pops 
up after a crash, make sure you give a good description of what 
triggered the crash in the comments field!

Really, people can help a lot, even if they aren't skilled programmers.

- Mike