Bug Days
are hosted by the Bugsquad
What, when, where?
A Bug day is a day when we get together on IRC, find bugs and clean our bug database Bugzilla so that developers can get more work done by focusing on bugs that matter instead of wasting their time on duplicates, unconfirmable bugs and problems that they've already resolved. What we basically do is called 'triaging', i.e. analysing and processing fault reports in Bugzilla.
But of course you can hop by the IRC channel at any time. Sometimes we're a bit busy or are not sitting in front of our computers, but there are usually always some folks around. Please be patient when waiting for response. You could also get started by cleaning up some of ../YourOwnBugs.
Who can be helpful at a bug day?
Virtually anyone. Bug day can be for the very timid, the very quiet or the very persistent. Your help is really useful, because if every person who reads planet.gnome.org cleaned up one bug, we'd have all unconfirmed bugs in the bugzilla database cleaned up in a single day.
You should have:
- decent ability to read English
- a user-level knowledge of GNOME
- 30 or so minutes of the day (the first time, after that you can do it in very small chunks.)
You don't need:
- any programming ability
- any prior experience with QA (quality assurance)
- a deep understanding of GNOME.
On the other hand, if you do have programming skills it's also a great way to get involved - after a few bug days, you can figure out quickly what needs help in GNOME and apply your talents there. See JoinGnome for other possibilities on how you can contribute to GNOME.
Who can I talk to in IRC?
On the last bugday: the bugsquadders listed here (and eventually more people) will be available for helping and guiding you during the following hours of the day:
Name
IRC nickname
Time frame (UTC)
Languages (best first)
Bruno*
brunobol
2000 to 2230
English, Portuguese, Spanish
Rupert
rupert
0000 to 2359
All
Pedro
pedro
1200 to 2100
Spanish, English
Susana
Susana
1700 to 2359
English, Portuguese
Andre*
andre
1200 to 2000
English, German, French
Muelli
muelli
1200 to 2000
German, English
nazgul
1700 to 2100
Jens
fizz
1700 to 2200
C
Please DO speak English in the channel so everybody can understand (and help) you. In general, you can talk to most people in the channel, at any time and any day. Persons with (*) are entitled to grant bugsquad permissions.
If you don't know how to convert your local time to UTC you can use this timezone converter.
Topic
The following bug reports are slated to be a good starting point for beginners.
Bugs filed today against core GNOME components
Depending on the version of Gnome you are running, you can triage bugs from the following lists.
For more information, please read our ../TriageGuide, including the world-famed 'triage in eight easy steps', to get some better flavor of the process.
