triage and bug_squad and other bugzilla minutiae

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

yo! fellow 1337 gnome h8x0rs![0]
	I just wanted to let you know that the bug squad will be doing
something sort of new over the next few weeks. As you know (unless
you've had your head buried in the sand since 1.4) I've spent the last
several months roving bugzilla, liberally sprinkling the 'triaged'[1]
keyword and keeping track of Where We Were. I'm still going to be doing
a fair bit of that as we stumble, pants-free, towards 2.2, but I've also
asked our most active bug hunters[2] to shoulder more of the load.
	So... what's that mean to you, the faithful (stubborn? insane? pick an
adjective) gnome h8x0r? Hopefully, not much- I expect that the bug
volunteers will attempt to bring the same level of consistency and
professionalism to the 2.2 process that I brought to 2.0. At least while
we figure this thing out, they'll be using the bug_squad keyword, so as
to minimize duplication and overlap, and to make it easier for me to
look over their shoulder. Hopefully, volunteers will talk with
individual maintainers before they start mowing through bugs, to make
sure that everyone is on the same page. If you find you're not on the
same page as a bug squad member, tell them. They are volunteering to
whine at you- which means they had better be willing to take the same
medicine. :) There will be some learning on the job, of course, but if I
beat them about the head while you aim at the kneecaps, hopefully
they'll quickly move from 'that damn bug spammer' to 'that damn mild but
useful pain in the ass.'[3] If they continue to lobby, whine, and
generally be unconstructive, please let me know, and I won't hesitate to
tell them about the new, shiny bugzilla at bugzilla.kde.org, and the
utter joy of seeing :: in stack traces alongside their old friends ()
and ??. :)
	Anyway, this is sort of new, and sort of scary, and it's going to
require a lot more letting go than I may be capable of, and a lot of
trust and communication by a lot of people. But it's the Right Thing for
a healthy Free Software project such as ourselves to try and do. So, I'm
excited. Hopefully when I return from Niger there will be a minimal
amount of trauma inflicted on me by everyone for making the attempt, and
a maximal amount of love from the bug team.

Thanks for your time, patience, patches, and pants-
Luis 'just another bugsquad member' Villa

[0]Yes, I'm punchy. I've been awake for 29 hours, many of which I spent
looking at /bugzilla/ code. Pity me. It's full of $, #, @ and other
things that were not intended to be parts of useful code. 
[1]over 4000 bugs served! 
[2]roughly 100 bugs closed or needinfo'd- all in all, a squad ATM of
just under 20 folks who've done that much in the past year and aren't
devels.
[3]I'm considering exactly this title for my next set of business cards.
Please don't tell Nat. Or Sun. Or especially my mother.