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Bug Day January 21, 2010

How to get help, how to get started, and schedule for Bugdays.

Bug days are conducted to reduce the number of UNCOnfirmed bugs in the bugzilla database, and to improve the quality of the bugs in the database.

Focus

Focus this week is on reducing the number of bugs with the dupeme/dupme whiteboard. These bugs have been flagged by someone (a dev, a triager, ...) as being possible duplicates of bugs already present in the bugzilla database.

A duplicate is a bug that has the same symptoms and very likely has the same cause than another bug. For example if Bug YYY is "When switching folder the quick search form isn't cleared" and bug XXX is "search term isn't removed", then YYY is a duplicate of XXX.

Process:

1. Pick an open bug from the list below (don't take the first one - take one at random so people don't all work on the same bug.)
2. Read it and try to understand what the bug is about.
3. Search the bug database until a match is found. I usually search with Two terms - those would be keyword I would take from the bug I think is a duplicate. For some words it is best to use only part of the word, like "delet" will allow you to find "deletes", "deleting", and "deleted". Then I browse the result and if I don't find anything I change one of the two words and use a synonym (mail/message, etc) ... You might also check the "hot bug lists" below.
4. If a duplicate is found
   • Improve summary and keywords to better match bug description if needed
   • Change component and version if it is incorrect
   • Do not remove dupme from whiteboard
   • Encourage the bug reporter to help in the matching bug, if appropriate.
   • Resolve the bug as a duplicate to the matching bug.
   • If the matching bug can be improved, or the bug you are duping has useful information for the match, make changes in the matching bug.
     • If you don't have the rights to change the bug, leave a comment about what changes are needed, including "I think this bug is a duplicate of bug ___".
5. If no duplicate is found, adjust the status whiteboard by removing the dupeme/dupme from whiteboard and make a comment .

DUPME bugs to choose from:

• List of possible duplicates for Thunderbird and SeaMonkey (151 bugs)
• List of possible duplicates for Thunderbird (107 bugs)
• List of possible duplicates for SeaMonkey/CORE (44 bugs)

Hot bugs lists - bugs you might be able to dupe to:

• "duptome" in whiteboard
• hot last 4 weeks (adjustable)
• all time top 100

Tips

You can ask help during the event here (this link will make you join #tb-qa on irc where most of us are available to provide help).

Before starting, see the Bugdays page for information about what to do and how to get help. Don't be concerned if you don't understand everything, just ask for help here.

Searching in bugzilla can be tricky - here are a few tricks that might help.