A question from the GitHub fringe at #FOSDEM.

[edent@mastodon.social]

A question from the GitHub fringe at #FOSDEM.

Do you count people who write detailed and useful bug report as contributors?

Would you list a bug reporter in your contributors / credits?

Why? Why not?

[mpe@hcommons.social]

@Edent well, they have "contributed". I would like to see a broader spectrum of credit that includes these people. It makes for better community-building; people feel valued.

[johthor@social.chaotikum.org]

@Edent I'd say yes. Sometimes a well written and researched bug report takes more effort than the fix for that report.

And I've seen https://allcontributors.org/ used to make those contributions seen.

[woo@fosstodon.org]

@Edent "A complaint is a gift". It might look rude to only publicly thank those who give the most valuable ones. You could do it in a private message.

[floppy@mastodon.me.uk]

@Edent I do! Or I try to, yes. https://allcontributors.org/

[haagch@mastodon.online]

@Edent A few commit messages in mesa mention me as "reported-by:" which is nice.

[plwt@mstdn.social]

@Edent People that report bugs are awesome.

I would probably count someone as a contributor if they are filing good bugs or are engaging in the fix process (answering questions, helping test) or have been filing useful bugs over a period of time.

[mainec@fromm.social]

@Edent Clear yes. Also anyone adding detail to an existing bug report. Also anyone mentoring the fix through to completion including those providing testing input.

There's projects talking about committers as people committed to the project instead of committing code to source control.

[edent@mastodon.social]

@mainec I love that framing

[ber@social.tchncs.de]

@Edent

Yes, (though I prefer "defect" or "problem" over "bug" as terminology, see "Tracking problems" slides from https://www.whyprogramsfail.com/slides.php )

Yes, I'd list all contributions in principle, but there are practical problems. E.g. when generating the list automatically, it is too easy for automatisation or small things to get more credits than others. To judge a value of a contribution thus is significant work and often cannot be done in Free Software development communities.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@Edent i consider bug reports and feedback to be important contributions, and I've contributed a fair amount of both to other projects over the years, but I never expected credit from doing so and would probably decline if offered.

it hasn't come up in my own foss projects, but I'd be happy to add sections to the credits for community QA and playtesting for folks who give quality bug reports and substantial feedback.