* Helen Faulkner <helen_ml_faulkner@yahoo.co.uk> [2004:10:12 13:12 +0100]: <much snippage> > So, Helen and I were thinking that we would like to do the following: > > 1) set up a section of the website about Submitting Bugs > > 2) explain in this section that we understand that submitting bug reports > can be scary or technically difficult or both, for people who are > inexperienced at that, and that we have all been there before and > understand how people feel > > 3) include links to the stuff on the main debian website about bugs ie > http://www.debian.org/Bugs/ > http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting > http://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/reportbug > etc > > 4) explain that the debian-women project is happy to help people be sure > that what they have is a bug, write their bug report, check that the bug > isn't already reported, get the headers right, proofread the description of > the problem, help them deal with confusing responses from the package > maintainer etc. Include an email address for people to write to for more > help (I am happy to be at the recieving end of that), and also suggest that > people get onto the #debian-women irc channel and ask for help there. I think this is good idea, but I also think that any improvements we make should be submitted back to Debian proper -- meaning, if we "design" a better interface / documentation for submitting bugs, we should make sure it gets added to the previously mentioned documents. I see no harm in having something on *our* website, of course, I just want to make sure everyone has access to the information. Also, I believe Colleen and Matthew Palmer were working on something similar. Do you two have any comments on this? > - get some people involved in submitting bug reports who might otherwise > have difficulty with doing that. This will increase their participation in > debian and will hopefully encourage them to think about particpating more > in the future. True enough, and submitting good bug reports often helps find fixes (or teaches you more about your system). > - get some bugs reported in a better/faster way than they might otherwise > be. I think I speak for all maintainers when I say that the only thing better than a good bug report, is no bug report. :) > I think this will be good for the debian-women project and good for debian > as a whole :) Familiarity with the BTS is important for both users *and* maintainers. Being eased into it is a good idea for anyone that wishes to get more involved in Debian... and yes, increasing the quality of software in Debian is not a minor consideration. > So, if people agree with this, can we set up such a section on the website. > I don't do html (hangs head in shame), but Helen (ie the other Helen - I > know it's confusing) is happy to do that part of it, if nobody else wants > to. I can write the text for the comments and so on. Sounds good to me. Now that alioth has some space on it again, there shouldn't be any issues. If Hamster gets an alioth account, I'll bring her up to speed on how it's setup (though, really, I wrote a fairly comprehensive explanation with is in the htdocs directory of the website, so it's probably self-explanatory). -- off the chain like a rebellious guanine nucleotide
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