Bug Hunt Summary

The WordPress Bug Hunt was pretty successful, and a lot of fun. Mark, Robert, and a handful of others were already hard at work just after midnight EDT! I joined the party at 10 AM EDT, and the #wordpress-bugs channel was bustling with bug hunting activity. Owen was there, along with Mark and Robert, and they were hitting a pretty good stride, focusing on a variety of bugs.

I decided to whittle down the easier bugs, so that the heavyweights could focus on the harder items. I worked on some template and theme issues, as well as some of the easier workflow items. Podz helped test some patches, and Morydd did double duty testing and writing patches. Shortly after lunch time Mike joined me at the Panera where I was working, and we joined an NaNoWriMo write-in. The room was filled with the soft clack-clack of keys being pounded.

We got into a pretty good rhythm, with Mark, Robert and Owen really cranking out patches, while Mike and Morydd helped test. I did a little bit of both, and also tried to close bugs that were invalid or inappropriate, to make sure that the list of open bugs was populated with stuff that actually needed work. It was actually quite exciting to be able to focus so completely on bugs, and to have such talented people on-hand to answer questions and provide suggestions. The collaboration of review, patch, and test was really something else.

The fun went on through Sunday, though I didn’t participate. At the time of this writing, 90 bugs have been squashed! It might not seem like much, in comparison to the 400+ open tickets, but it’s a great start, and will go a very long way toward making WordPress 1.6 a terrific product.

Thanks to everyone who helped out!