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madjr
November 21st, 2010, 06:02 PM
So if this situation continues it seems that 11.04 will not be as polished as the whole world is looking forward to and instead feel very unfinished and buggy for everyone.

The cry for help was just made by the papercuts team this week, because of a recent lack of members, contributors and testers for natty.

from the canonical blog:

http://design.canonical.com/2010/11/paper-cuts-need-you/


You won’t be surprised to hear that I am on the Papercutters team and, in that capacity, was on the receiving end of an email from Vish who points out a couple of things:

1) Only a handful of members in the Papercutters team are active on the project.
2) For a project to live we need as many people as possible contributing on a fairly regular basis.

If you are new to the area (well, this corner of cyberspace at least) you may not know about the Paper Cuts project. It is an initiative to identify and fix small bugs that impact on the user experience of Ubuntu and the applications that run on Ubuntu.

The Paper Cuts projects needs active participation from as many people as possible, there are many ways to get involved and there is something for you to do whether it is creating an icon, writing a patch, passing the patch through to an upstream, changing the description of an application for the Software Centre, triaging and identifying the Paper Cut bugs or simply cheering everyone along!

If you used to be active but aren’t any more Vish has some questions for you too:

1) Are you having any difficulties working on the project recently , have there been any changes in the process which have made it harder to contribute?

2) Are you finding any part of the process difficult or are you having trouble getting started or understanding the process?

He also has the following request:

We will be starting the Natty papercut cycle soon, do let me or any of the other active members know about the difficulties and if there are any changes to be made to the project which would make it easier for you to contribute to the project?

As a member of the team do take some time every often or so to take a look at the project and to review atleast one bug or item. Each bug every member handles will reduce the workload for everyone in the team.
This is a community project and if the project is to sustain for a long time we need you to pitch in.

The impact of the Paper Cuts projects has grown with every cycle. To date there have been 295 Paper Cuts fixed (https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bugs?field.searchtext=&orderby=-importance&search=Search&field.status:list=FIXRELEASED&assignee_option=any&field.assignee=&field.bug_reporter=&field.bug_supervisor=&field.bug_commenter=&field.subscriber=&field.tag=&field.tags_combinator=ANY&field.has_cve.used=&field.omit_dupes.used=&field.omit_dupes=on&field.affects_me.used=&field.has_patch.used=&field.has_branches.used=&field.has_branches=on&field.has_no_bra). From descriptions of apps in the Software Centre to the wrong album art appearing in a Rythmbox notification and eog not asking to save changes there have been lots of small fixes that smooth the way for the users of Ubuntu and a host of applications.

This wiki page tells you what you need to do to get involved.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut

Please get involved, get active and let’s help Vish, Sense and all the Papercutters make this a Paper Cuts cycle to remember!

More.. (http://design.canonical.com/2010/11/paper-cuts-need-you/)


Instructions from:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut


CONTRIBUTING

The One Hundred Paper Cuts Project is a great way to get involved in the Ubuntu community. Several members have found paper cuts a stepping stone to get further involved with the Ubuntu community. There are several ways you can contribute:

If you are a hacker or programmer, have a look at the paper cuts that are assigned to a milestone (https://launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+series), or that have the 'Triaged (https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bugs?search=Search&field.status=Triaged)' status;

* Not a hacker? No problem, you can help us still:

-Test your favorite default or featured applications and see if you can find any paper cuts that need fixing. If you find any, report them;
-Test proposed solutions for paper cuts;
-Help triaging the paper cuts.

Fixing a paper cut

You can find paper cuts ready to work on by looking at the milestones (https://launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+series), or going through bug reports that have the 'Triaged (https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bugs?search=Search&field.status=Triaged)' status.

* Assign yourself to the bug of the paper cut you selected and set its status to 'In Progress';
* Work on a solution and commit it in a branch to Launchpad, or generate a patch;
* Attach the branch or patch to the bug report;
* You can choose to either make sure your solution gets added to Ubuntu and forwarded upstream yourself, or you can wait for the Papercutters to help you with that. Be prepared to process feedback about your solution.

Members who have helped fix papercuts are listed in thePapercuts Hall Of Fame.

For more information about how to fix bugs, also see: Helping with bug fixing (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToFix).

How to report a paper cut

If you found something you believe to be a valid paper cut, how do you report the issue?

* Make sure that the issue you're about to report isn't already reported at Launchpad (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage#Marking%2520duplicate);
* Make sure the bug is a valid paper cut;
* If the paper cut was already reported in Ubuntu, but not in the One Hundred Paper Cuts project, press the "Also affects Project" link to add the paper cut to the project;
* If the paper cut was not reported yet:
1. File the bug in the affected package in the Ubuntu project on Launchpad. When reporting the bug, use Apport, either via the application's "Help -> Report a Problem" menu item, or by using the command 'ubuntu-bug' and pass the name of the affected package as an argument.
2. Now add the One Hundred Paper Cuts project to the bug report using the "Also affects Project" link.

More information about reporting bugs in general can be found at ReportingBugs (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs).

Triaging paper cuts

People who would like to help with managing the flow of incoming paper cuts can contribute by triaging the bug reports on the One Hundred Paper Cuts project (https://launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts) at Launchpad.

* Verify the bug is a valid paper cut;
- If not, then mark the One Hundred Paper Cuts project task as Invalid and leave a message to explain your actions to the reporter;
* Verify the paper cut can be reproduced in the development release of Ubuntu;
- If not, then mark the One Hundred Paper Cuts project task as Invalid and leave a message to explain your actions to the reporter;
*Verify the paper cut report contains all necessary information;
- If not, ask the reporter to provide the information that is lacking;

When you are an active contributor to papercut triaging, you can be asked or ask to join the Papercutters team.

If you are looking for more information about bug triaging, a good source of information is: Helping with bugs.

Contact and help

If you want to ask a question or need help, please feel free to contact us via the following communication channels:

*IRC: The #ayatana channel on Freenode. (How to connect via IRC (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InternetRelayChat).)
*Mailing List: The Ayatana Mailing list (https://launchpad.net/~ayatana).

kaldor
November 21st, 2010, 06:16 PM
My biggest problem with contributing bug reports to Ubuntu (launchpad, dev section, other) I always find that my reports get no attention and are ignored.

The papercuts project is great and I have contributed to reporting in the past. Doesn't feel like I've been answered.

czr114
November 21st, 2010, 06:46 PM
I'm downloading the daily now. If it's stable enough for desktop use, I'll run it and get some bug reports in.

czr114
November 21st, 2010, 06:51 PM
My biggest problem with contributing bug reports to Ubuntu (launchpad, dev section, other) I always find that my reports get no attention and are ignored.

The papercuts project is great and I have contributed to reporting in the past. Doesn't feel like I've been answered.
I can't count the number of times I found one problem or another with community-built software, and was able to confirm it because somebody took the time to file a bugreport or complaint.

Even if the issue sits unresolved, at least other users can discover the problem through Google and know that the bug isn't something unique to one system and wasn't created by user error.

madjr
November 21st, 2010, 08:12 PM
My biggest problem with contributing bug reports to Ubuntu (launchpad, dev section, other) I always find that my reports get no attention and are ignored.

The papercuts project is great and I have contributed to reporting in the past. Doesn't feel like I've been answered.

Reporting is important, but it's not only reports that they need, thats only part of it.

people think that reporting is all they need to do....

this is what they need:

The Paper Cuts projects needs active participation from as many people as possible, there are many ways to get involved and there is something for you to do whether it is creating an icon, writing a patch, passing the patch through to an upstream, changing the description of an application for the Software Centre, triaging and identifying the Paper Cut bugs or simply cheering everyone along!

at least you report and thats good, in fact that is much better, than some people who just rant in random places over the web.

Lancro
November 21st, 2010, 08:37 PM
I would like to help, but my english is bad, and my knowledge of linux is worst, I think this is for advanced or medium users, not noobs like me.

madjr
November 22nd, 2010, 06:59 AM
I would like to help, but my english is bad, and my knowledge of linux is worst, I think this is for advanced or medium users, not noobs like me.

nah, is not that hard and anyone can learn.

papercuts are not huge serious bugs, but smaller bugs, inconsistencies and annoyances.

Khakilang
November 22nd, 2010, 07:09 AM
I am so happy with the LTS that I don't have any bug to report and I haven't try 11.04. Maybe I will try to help for a change.

Naiki Muliaina
November 22nd, 2010, 01:14 PM
Hmm didn't realise they had such a lack of help. Will grab the natty alpha/beta/whatever its up to tonight and see if there's anything I can report / help with.

kaldor
November 22nd, 2010, 01:24 PM
at least you report and thats good, in fact that is much better, than some people who just rant in random places over the web.

What's the point of whining about something when you can instead report issues to make it better? ;)

That's what puts me off about a lot of the testimonials/beginner talk sections.


I would like to help, but my english is bad, and my knowledge of linux is worst, I think this is for advanced or medium users, not noobs like me.

Of course you can help :)

Like another poster said, papercuts are good things to report. They're little annoying bugs that should be fixed but are not detrimental. For example... GNOME panel icons reorganizing themselves.

3rdalbum
November 22nd, 2010, 02:07 PM
Most people don't understand what a papercut is, and try to report "Please make a driver for the wireless on Lenovo computers!" as a papercut. Or worse - "Have you fixed the problem where Ubuntu crashes?".

matt_symes
November 22nd, 2010, 02:10 PM
Most people don't understand what a papercut is, and try to report "Please make a driver for the wireless on Lenovo computers!" as a papercut. Or worse - "Have you fixed the problem where Ubuntu crashes?".

I can well believe that. You would have thought the name papercut (an excellent name) would suggest the scope.

grahammechanical
November 22nd, 2010, 03:17 PM
This post has got me interested in Papercuts. I have just been having a look see. I notice that something that I found annoying in Rythmbox was reported as a papercut a few months ago and has been fixed (which I had noticed). It seems that simple users such as myself can get involved in this process. It will benefit us all in the end.

Regards

Lucradia
November 22nd, 2010, 03:25 PM
My biggest problem with contributing bug reports to Ubuntu (launchpad, dev section, other) I always find that my reports get no attention and are ignored.

The papercuts project is great and I have contributed to reporting in the past. Doesn't feel like I've been answered.

And my biggest problem is when people mark my bugs as invalid, duplicate (and that original bug is going no where fast, etc.), resolved (when there's no fix yet released), wontfix (even though it causes serious issues.)

I've stayed away from launchpad forever because of this, and now that Ubuntu is going to be using unity, I'd rather not use ubuntu anymore anyway. (The mini.iso, is one of the last things to release when an ubuntu release occurs, and until it does, stable, I won't use ubuntu at all.)

madjr
November 23rd, 2010, 08:11 AM
And my biggest problem is when people mark my bugs as invalid, duplicate (and that original bug is going no where fast, etc.), resolved (when there's no fix yet released), wontfix (even though it causes serious issues.)

I've stayed away from launchpad forever because of this, and now that Ubuntu is going to be using unity, I'd rather not use ubuntu anymore anyway. (The mini.iso, is one of the last things to release when an ubuntu release occurs, and until it does, stable, I won't use ubuntu at all.)

whats wrong with unity?

as i seen with the dev it can be disabled if you wish.

most of the papercuts for natty will be to get unity and many more components as bug free or as less annoying as possible.

But cant do that if there not enough helping..

Even an extra 1 or 2 active individuals can end up making a big difference;)

weasel fierce
November 23rd, 2010, 09:28 AM
And my biggest problem is when people mark my bugs as invalid, duplicate (and that original bug is going no where fast, etc.), resolved (when there's no fix yet released), wontfix (even though it causes serious issues.)

I've stayed away from launchpad forever because of this, and now that Ubuntu is going to be using unity, I'd rather not use ubuntu anymore anyway. (The mini.iso, is one of the last things to release when an ubuntu release occurs, and until it does, stable, I won't use ubuntu at all.)

You'd prefer gnome shell ?

Because gnome 2 isn't going anywhere forward mate.

cascade9
November 23rd, 2010, 09:41 AM
What I find amusing is lauchpad 'bugs' that are from hardware limitations (that the poster hasnt realised is the problem so they post it as a bug)


You'd prefer gnome shell ?

Because gnome 2 isn't going anywhere forward mate.

So, theres gnome shell.....does this make Gnome 2.X any less capable?

Just because there is something new out doesnt mean it has to go in (let alone be default). The ubuntu devs dont agree, which is one source of annoyances

I installed debian for a friend just after 10.10 came out and there was no nVidia 96.xx drivers because of xorg 1.9. She couldnt be bothered to reinstall/roll back to 10.04. Yeah, yeah, the 'no 96.xx drivers' was in the release notes, but most users never even look at them, let alone read them.

weasel fierce
November 23rd, 2010, 09:43 AM
So, theres gnome shell.....does this make Gnome 2.X any less capable?

Just because there is something new out doesnt mean it has to go in (let alone be default). The ubuntu devs dont agree, which is one source of annoyances

Im not aware of what all their decisions are, but it seems gnome 2x won't see a ton of development any more. So it makes sense for ubuntu to move along.

I guess I am a distinct minority, in that I like normal gnome, I like the gnome shell, and I'll probably like Unity just fine too :)

Lucradia
November 23rd, 2010, 03:28 PM
You'd prefer gnome shell ?

Because gnome 2 isn't going anywhere forward mate.

I'd prefer openbox to be honest.


So, theres gnome shell.....does this make Gnome 2.X any less capable?

Unity isn't GNOME, obviously GNOME Shell would still exist. (Just like how Wayland isn't X.)