Closing the Bugsquad Team on Launchpad

[Marc Randolph]

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 9:01 PM, Eric Partlo <partloer at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 5:11 PM, David Dodd <dako3256 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> My problem is lack of direction I think. I have read all of the wiki's
>> and guides, but lack some kind of walk through maybe to get a general
>> idea of how to handle them, because to be quite frank I am as newbie as
>> newbie can be on this, but would love to get more involved.
>>
>> I'm not looking for a hand-hold but maybe a general step through
>> process. I know how to get to the bugs, but from there I get fuzzy.
>>
>> david
>>
> I also agree with David Dodd.  I am also looking to get involved but lack
> direction on how to get started.  While I have used Linux on and off for
> several years now I still consider myself a newbie.
> I have also read a lot online such as the wiki's but yet still lost.  I good
> tutorial on how about to solve a bug such as an example of a bug from
> beginning to end would be much appreciated.
> Eric S. Partlo
> partloer at gmail.com

Howdy Eric, David, and anyone else out there interested in getting started.

There are indeed a number of wiki pages which detail lots of different
situations, but the the reality if the matter is that you can get
started as soon as you join up, as described on the
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad page.  After that, your helping could
start out as simple as doing any of the following:

* attempt to reproduce a bug (and if you do, mark it as confirmed)
* pick a package and look through its bugs for duplicates (its
surprising how many duplicates can sometimes be found by simply
searching with lauchpad or with google using a few key words from a
bug report)
* search with google and see if others have had this problem and maybe
already either worked-around it, or perhaps discovered it was a
configuration problem rather than a real bug

Of course, there are many other situations that crop up... if you find
one of those that you'd like to tackle, simply try to follow
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage

Especially when you are starting out, if you don't feel up to a
particular, don't worry - just move on to another one (but of course,
those are the ones you learn the most on usually :-)

As with many things, once you get started, it's not as hard as it
might look from the outside.  Not the least of which is because there
is a friendly group of people that hang out on the #ubuntu-bugs
freenode irc channel at random times during the day (and some at
night) which will do their best to help answer any questions as you
step through working tickets.  The channel see's varying levels of
activity throughout the day, but if you have a question don't be
afraid to come there and ask it... just be prepared that the answer
may come in 2 seconds, or may come much, much later.  If the answer
doesn't come right away, move on to another bug and come back to that
one later.

Have fun!

   Marc