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I'm Solveig.

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Here you have my contact info.

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I use Free Software and especially Debian
since quite some time now

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and I also contribute to Tails

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so my interests are in privacy…

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No? Yes? Do you hear me?

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I do some non-developer things

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and in Debian I found a way to contribute
without coding

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or maintaining packages which is to
triage bugs.

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Bug triaging, it helps,

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it's kind of non visible but it helps
Debian as a whole

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because maintainers don't always
have the time to deal

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with all their bug reports,

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some packages have a lot of
bug reports,

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like the kernel or Xorg.

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Also, it's a good way to improve the
package quality.

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When some packages have a lot of
bugs open against them,

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it can make it harder for the maintainers
to know which ones are

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solvable, actionable, and they can get a bit
over their head.

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So when you triage bugs, you help
everybody have a better experience

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with Debian.

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So, you want to do it.

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First, it's easy.

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You don't need to learn any new tool
supposing you already know

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how to read and write e-mail.

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So that's a low threshold to start.

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It's very rewarding, the maintainers are
happy when you help them,

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even if you don't touch their packages,

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if you sort their bugs, they'll be happy
and the users who submitted them

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will be happy that somebody looked
at them

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so it can be very joyful.

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Also, you search random bugs for packages
you don't necessarily know,

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so you learn about a lot of software
in Debian and

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some of them are really really surprising
and you…

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"Wha? What does this do?" and that's kind
of fun.

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And of course, it saves kittens.

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On this page, there's a…

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The bug triage page is a howto page
I made some years ago, with tips

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and this part, especially, has a list
of teams that added themselves

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so that they want you to help
sort their bugs.

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Those are the teams I worked with,
they're really really nice,

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they don't bite.

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They will let you know if you did an error,

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they will answer your questions,
you can work together.

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I don't recommend closing random bugs.

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If you go and touch packages from people
you have not warned

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or who are not willing to have somebody
touch their bugs,

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you might have backfire.

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To start, I think it's good to go packages
that you know people are happy

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if you help with.

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The first tool to triage bugs is UDD.

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I don't know if you've ever tried it,
the interface is really great.

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Here, that's UDD.

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So it's a bit arid like this, but

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it allows you to select many many
types of packages,

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we can see that later.

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Then you can choose a team or
other criteria

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and when you're happy about
your criteria, you search.

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It will give you a list of packages
corresponding to your criteria

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and you can select some more info
you want listed here.

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So, that's UDD search.

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I usually ignore the bug reports that
somebody has searched in the last year.

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Probably somebody else will look at them,

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let's look at those that are lost
in the limbos.

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I select wontfix, moreinfo, upstream or
unreproducible.

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Those are those that probably you can do
something on.

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And then you chose a team, preferably
one of those that is listed

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in the page we saw before.

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Once you'll have selected a bug and
something to do on it,

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you'll have to document what you do.

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Because you can change many many stuff
on the bug,

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you send the commands to
control@bugs.debian.org

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but it's always nice to put a small
a small sentence, or 2 or 3

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to say what made you conclude that is
the right change.

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Also make sure the e-mail where you do
the commands is sent

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to everybody interested, because
by default it only sends it

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to the maintainer and the submitter
in some cases.

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So if other people answered the bug
report saying

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"Hey, I have the bug too" or if upstream
came by to explain something,

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it's good to see all of those who
interacted on the bug report and

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put them all in copy.

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Ideally, people can receive the e-mail,
read what you're saying and

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don't have to go back to the bug page
to read it again.

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So that you should sum up the thread
if it was long and have them know everything.

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If you do massive triage, you should have
a few generic messages

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so you keep the messages and just
replace the words as needed.

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It saves you a lot of time.

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Also, it allows you to put a lot of
nice things in your generic e-mail

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that people are always happy to read
without more effort.

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You know, add a little "Thanks for
submitting the bug" or

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"That was a very interesting discussion"
or something like that.

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Let's keep the positive energy flowing.

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There are many ways to triage.

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One of them is trying to reproduce
bug reports.

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In the UDD we saw earlier, if you select
'unreproducible'

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Oh no… those that don't have the tag
'confirmed',

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these are bugs that one person submitted
but nobody knows if they're really

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still up to date or if it's just, somebody
submitted it but…

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If it's confirmed, there's more chance
that the maintainer will look at them.

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If they're really old, maybe they have been
corrected and nobody bothered

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to close the bug.

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If they're new, maybe you should have
them too, so see if it's the case.

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If it's the case, you write to this adress

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the 'nnn' is the number of the bug and
you add the tag 'confirmed'

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That's how we interact with control@b.d.o

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All the bug tracking is on a e-mail
interface

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'found bugnumber versionnumber'

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that's a command that control will
recognize,

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you give the bug number and what version
you're running.

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You add the tag 'confirmed'.

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Since you found it, you're 2, so it's
confirmed.

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And 'thanks', you always have to end
your e-mails to control with 'thanks'

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or 'thank you' or whatever variation
of it you want.

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The control is a very very polite beast
and likes you to be the same.

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If you don't put politeness, it won't work.

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Actually it's to tell them that the commands
are done, but

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let's be polite also with machines.

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If the bug was not confirmed, you tried
to reproduce it and you couldn't.

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You could add the tag 'unreproducible' or
'moreinfo'

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So, depending if you're quite sure that…
if you're not the first saying

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"I can't reproduce it" or if you're sure
you have exactly the same setup as

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the original submitter,

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then you should put 'unreproducible'.

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If it might be reproducible for other
people, but just not you,

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then you should ask 'moreinfo' so that
the original submitter gives

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more details on how to reproduce their bug

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And it also requires you to be polite
at the end of the command.

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An other very useful thing is to forward
them upstream.

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Some upstream follow the Debian bug tracker

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but a lot of them don't.

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Maybe somebody reported the issue in
the Debian bug tracker but

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upstream is not aware of it

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and most Debian maintainers are not
gonna solve the bug themselves,

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they're more probably gonna wait for it
to be corrected upstream,

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so we need the bug to go back to where
it will be corrected

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In a lot of cases, it can be because
upstream considers it not a bug,

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so won't fix it, so let's say it on the
Debian bug too

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or maybe upstream is not aware of
the bug so…

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Ok, that's very tiny…

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At least you have all.

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Here you have the command to add
the upstream bug tracker number.

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"forwarded bugnumber", you put the URL
in the upstream's bug tracker

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and then you say thanks again.

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So that's what I was saying before, you
can also report it upstream

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if it hasn't been already.

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Sometimes, the upstream bug tracker
is more up to date,

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so in upstream it's fixed, so it's good
to let know to the Debian bug tracker

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and add the tag 'fixedupstream'

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and it's good to say in which version
so that the maintainer may be

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motivated to update to the new version.

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In lot of cases, the bug reports are tagged
'moreinfo', which is

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somebody said "It doesn't work", which,
sorry for you, but there's no chance

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it's gonna be fixed with that.

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So in lots of cases, the bug is tagged
'moreinfo' to say

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"This bug does not give enough info
to be solved"

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Or sometimes, the maintainer
packages a new version

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and you think probably the bug is
solved,

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and you also need to ask the original
submitter if they still have the bug

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Or somebody said "Oh I'm gonna to some
fix next weekend" and it's 2 years later

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and you're not sure they actually did
the test they were saying they would do.

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So, info were asked and it feels like
the bug is hanging.

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In those cases, it's helpful, sometimes,
to send an e-mail to the person who said

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"I'm gonna do something" or who needs to
answer if they still have the bug

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and saying "Hey! that's a gentle ping"

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"You said you would test" or "Can you still
reproduce a bug?"

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so that you can update the status of the
bug on the bug tracker.

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It's good to wait, like, a good amount of
time before bothering people

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about this kind of thing.

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I usually wait one year, like I told you,
probably shorter might be good,

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but it's good also not to harass people,
they have a life.

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Sometimes, the bugs have been tagged
'moreinfo' or 'wontfix' for a long time

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The info is not given, or it's unlikely
that somebody else wants

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this 'non-bug' fixed.

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Different teams have different policies
but most of them will be happy

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if you close the bugs that nobody is gonna
do anything about.

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If the bug was tagged 'moreinfo' more than
a year ago and

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nobody answered to give more info, or if
a major release came out and

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probably the bug is fixed but the original
submitter doesn't answer

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then it's good to close them, in most
cases, depending on the team.

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But it's good to ping them before you
close

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give them a reasonable amount of time
to try to test it again.

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Ok, we don't have the bottom of the page.

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The command to…

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The command to close a bug is to write to
-done@control.b.d.o

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Maybe I shouldn't have done that.

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And closing the bugs is kind of one of
the most satisfying things to do.

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Sometimes, I speak with my maintainer
friends and I say

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"Hey, I closed 25 bugs today" and they're
kind of jealous because

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when you have to actually work on the bugs
to close them,

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you can rarely fix 25 in one day.

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So it's kind of the perks of doing
bug triaging.