Weekly overview of the bug-hunting category- week 24, 2019

This is a report on the weekly contributions to the bug hunting category. The post contains basic stats like the number of contributions received by the category, an excerpt on new contributors if there are any and a detailed comparison of the week's output with previous weeks.

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Previous Reports

2018

2019

Bug hunting contributions summary

Week 24: June 6th - june 13th

34 Contributions, 23 scored higher than 0
3 Ignored posts
An average score of 60.09
15 unique contributors
No Staff Pick
2 new contributors (@mistakili, @friendsmobile)

Number of reviewed and rewarded contributions

Average score

Reports Reviewed By Reviewer

So this week we had a total of 34 contributions. That is 15 contributions less than the 49 we had last week. We received 11 reports that were not scored. The highest so far in 2 weeks. 8 contributions were not reviewed for the reason that

the hunters failed to apply the category's template
the hunters in these cases did not wait for the issues to be acknowledged by the POs in their respective repos.
the hunters had github/steemit profiles that could not be verified at the time of review.

There were two ( 1, 2 ) duplicates of either existing issues or issues that were linked by the same root cause. Then we had a report that could not be replicated by the reviewer.

This brought the average to 60.09, less than last week's average of 63.55. With fewer reports one would have expected a higher average. The high number of zero scored contributions, although not included in he calculation of the week's average, impacted heavily on the overall output.

The week in comparison to the last 4 weeks had very little activity. It can be seen that the contributors concentrate more on releases on the f-droid store for open source android projects. Their focus is more on the mobile apps than the web based apps.

contributions

There were no double digits this week. @friendsmobile had the most contributions. Bringing in 7 reports, four of these reports were scored 0 unfortunately. In total, he received an average score of 69. There were good turn outs from @darewealth and @sagorahmed, each bringing in 4 reports.

Surprisingly, for the third week in a row, the most active repo is the ACG player. Bringing in a total of 6 reports, I can say it has covered it's last lap. But what do I know? My prediction came short the week before

The ACG player is designed with all the basic features of a music player. Well, it has some other cool features like;

Playlist.
Car mode
Data overview
UI customizations
No bugs at the time of writing

You can look up the repo by following this link - https://github.com/AugustToko/ACG-Player .

Other project repos that stood out

If you are looking for new applications to explore, here are some repos that stood out this week. Sadly, just one made the cut this week

https://github.com/michpohl/Loopy - Loopy is an audio player for Android devices dedicated to seamlessly looping audio files. It can basically loop every audio file you have in your media library. Few points to note:
- Loopy is not an audio editor, so the loops you want to use should already be prepared and edited properly, if you need exact results.
- It's purpose is to provide a solution to those who just want to play audio files in loop, like DJs, artists, musicians, who can use this for easy training sessions, to provide gapless background atmosphere or play neverending beat loops.

And there you have it. Happy hunting :D

Common Mistakes And How To Fix Them

I will be highlighting the common mistakes found this week. I will also be offering tips on how to avoid them in future contributions. The tips will depend solely on the scores received by the contributions in a particular week.

1. Contributions with a score below 40

The severity level of the bug was marked as negligible.

Submission of cosmetic or trivial UI issues (phone orientation, phone locking/unlocking etc.) that have a negligible effect on the functionality of the application may lead to a lower score of your contribution, thus reducing your chances of receiving a reward

If what you spotted is a discrepancy in the user interface or just the front end appearance of the software, then it is most probably a trivial bug and would be scored as such. So make sure to look out for this.
Also, there are times when a contribution is scored negligible because the expected behavior of a particular feature could still be achieved by a default option. For example - while some third party camera apps may not work when used for uploading within other applications (probably because the PATH for that particular cam app is not set), the default android cam works. It will be particularly stressful and redundant to have the project owner set a unique PATH for every cam application out there. This is one thing a contributor should look out for.

2. Contributions with a score below 60

The contributor made no efforts to pinpoint the cause, or applied incorrect methods in searching for it.

To avoid being scored in the questionnaire with this option, I will advise hunters to comb through the app's repo. Search the repo using a keyword related to the affected feature, it could be the name of the function itself. If found, analyze the block of code behind the function's implementation. Check for syntax and logical errors, document your findings.
You can attach logcats in your reports for issues that involve a crash. If you don't know to produce one, watch this tutorial for how to.

Other News

This is to inform contributors and the general public that while reports will be accepted to projects outside the whitelist, they will only be reviewed if the issue opened is acknowledged by the project owner or maintainer.

While the new guidelines are yet to be officially announced, bug-hunters and open source enthusiasts looking to help open source projects, please take a look at our whitelist of projects that you can submit bug reports for:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S7ayFTEy5CBMyeJvFRgq5JUjlqZxFjWAWhhrBL0GC60/edit#gid=1954068373

If you wish to have your open source projects added to our whitelist you can contact us on our help channel at our discord server. You can also leave your questions and comments below :)

Thanks

@fego