"They Say It's Your Birthday" aka bug day 2004/02/26

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

o/~ They say it's your birthday o/~
o/~ we're gonna have a good time o/~
...
o/~ Yes we're going to a party party o/~
.....[1]

It's that time of the week again, where we seek to attack UNCONFIRMED
and crash bugs, and improve the quality of our software. Also, maybe
this week Luis will have a beer in honor of turning Old.[2]

What is this thing you call 'bug day'?
======================================

Bug day is a day we get together on IRC, find bugs, and clean bugzilla.
We do all of this so that developers can get more work done by focusing
on bugs that matter instead of duplicates, unconfirmable bugs, and
things that they've already closed. 

Why is bug day useful?
======================

There are about 7,000 open bugs in bugzilla.gnome.org, which is a large
number. If I close four of those bugs, it doesn't make a difference. 

But two weeks ago there were over 50 people from 17 countries who
dropped in to #bugs for bug day. If each of those people close only 4
bugs, that's a significant percentage of the open bugs that just got
nailed. And if only ten of those people come back and close four more a
day for a week... again, big numbers of bugs closed. And if one or two
of those people are clinically insane they can close hundreds of bugs.
If you're closing only four bugs, you're helping. Trust me. :)

With this approach, we closed about 10% of open nautilus bugs last week.
Again, not huge numbers- but that's 10% less work for the folks who are
working at making your file manager more stable and more useful. If we
keep that up (or grow it) we can move our favorite desktop much closer
to being the ass-kicker we all want it to be.

Who can help at a bug day?
==========================

Virtually anyone[3]. Bug day can be for the very timid, the very quiet,
or the very persistent.

You do need:
* 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
* a deep understanding of GNOME. 

On the other hand, if you do have programming ability, it's also a great
way to get involved- after a few bug days, you can figure out what needs
help in gnome quickly and apply your talents there.

So when is this 'bug day'?
==========================

Owing to Luis trying to have a life at least one special day a year, Bug
Day is tentatively a little shorter than usual this week, from 8:30AM
EST to 5:30PMEST on Thursday- that's 13:30UTC->22:30UTC.

http://timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=5&month=2&year=2004&hour=8&min=30&sec=0&p1=179

Join us in #bugs on irc.gnome.org during that time, and we'll chill and
share the bugzilla love.

You will have a cake with many candles, I want a FAQ with many questions.
=========================================================================

In some cultures, the birthday celebrant gives gifts to others. In that
fine tradition, I give everyone considering bug day the gift of 'FAQ.' 

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/bugsquad/triage/faq.html

Hope you enjoy the gift :)

See you all Thursday-
Luis

[1] http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Beatles/Birthday.html If you don't
own the album this is on, run, don't walk, to your local CD pusher.
[2] 26.