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Re: dormant bugs and our perception

From:  Rahul Sundaram <sundaram-AT-fedoraproject.org>
To:  For discussions about marketing and expanding the Fedora user base <fedora-marketing-list-AT-redhat.com>
Subject:  Re: dormant bugs and our perception
Date:  Wed, 02 Jan 2008 03:13:56 +0530
Message-ID:  <477AB41C.9080405@fedoraproject.org>
Archive-link:  Article, Thread

inode0 wrote:
> On Jan 1, 2008 7:33 AM, Rahul Sundaram  wrote:
>> William Cattey wrote:
>>> Bottom line:  Every bug deserves 15 minutes of triage.  The value
>>> produced is measurable and significant.
>> I am pretty sure everybody will agree with that. However we don't really
>> have many triagers and any help on this would be most welcome.
> 
> What is the magnitude of the problem? 

It is a pretty huge problem. To understand it a bit more, some stats.

There is a total of 13557 bugs (excluding documentation, directory 
server and Fedora EPEL repository)

Against Fedora 7, 8 and rawhide alone, 9708 bugs are open. Quite a 
number of them are package review requests rather than bugs but still 
the number of open bugs that are likely still valid at any given point 
has been hovering around 8000. We have around 5000+ source packages 
(only source packages are listed in bugzilla) and majority of them are 
filed against a few key packages.

While I understand one more
> triager would be welcome would one more triager make any difference?

Certainly but you probably need to target specific things. The large 
majority of bugs are usually filed against core components like the 
kernel, xorg or default applications like Openoffice.org, Firefox, 
Evolution etc. Typical 80/20 rule.

A new triager could focus on say Xorg bug reports and make a pretty big 
difference and you don't need any programming skills to do it. If you 
can coordinate this with the relevant package maintainers, that would be 
even better. Christopher Brown has been doing it for the kernel with 
pretty good results.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-kernel-list/2007-D...

Red Hat desktop team has a dedicated bug triager, Matej Cepl and you 
might want to contact him before you touch on any of the desktop 
components.

> Would 10 more make a difference? How many would it take to make a real
> difference?

I am just making a guess here but a group of about 3 or 4 people working 
together as a team on organizing bug days etc can certainly make a 
immediate difference to the entire bug list. If you are interested, refer

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers

Join #fedora-qa and ping me  (nick:mether) or Will Woods (nick:wwods) 
and we can help you get you started. Otherwise just ask in the channel.

Rahul

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