David, Great idea! Good on you (as they somewhere on the planet)! Quote _Many_ newbie questions go unanswered. Unquote
Getting bug reports and questions answered filled is a problem until you're wearing the 'dev' label. And once a dev, then you'll be expected to fix/anser it yourself, and fixing bugs isn't very much fun(from what I hear and have experienced and why they take a long time to get fixed). Don't take the non-fix/no answer personally, and tell this to your students! Devs are a lot smarter (in some ways) than I(us) will ever be. (And the devs at Sugar have been very patient with my incessant problems). And, FWIW, plenty of bugs in _lots_ of Open Source projects never get addressed at all because the fun is NOT in bug fixing, it's in scratching an itch to create something that (almost) works. Sugar only has a few devs and they are all volunteers (from what I understand). And, devs for the most part are all creative, problem solving, computational intelligent (geniuses some of them) humans, who want the same in their tasks. Rarely does bug fixing include that space. And you're absolutely right about 'quality bug reports' getting attention... train your students up on that... but perhaps focus on an activity first? Something with more devs and support? I'd say look at Scratch, if it runs on your current install. I would suggest you take a look at Scratch and the remixes happening there for a few reason... it's code and projects (albeit unsophisticated) in constant flow and correction. Cook up a difficult piece of a scratch project for your students and see how bug reporting and code correction works there... between your students. They can swap code and remix to come up with something truly interesting. The students will quickly ID who does and who doesn't. Their friends might be great at telling a joke but it's that guy that noone ever talks to that gets things done. They'll quickly see how things work between those who can and those who report bugs (ouch, that sounds awfully familiar to another saying!) Scratch also has lots of examples of code, lots of possible areas for error, and enormously large amount of forum/helpdesk activity. That, and your students will get to 'write' some code. Win-win. Then, once they've got the vagaries of forums/wikis/bug search/silence from unresponded bugs and bug reporting down then do a full 'smoke test' on Sugar. This is just a suggestion. with regards, Dennis _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep