Weekly overview of the bug-hunting category- week 20, 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

The empty spots are the weeks I didn't post an overview. The past month I was at a bootcamp and was unavailable to post the weekly write-ups. I apologize for the long intermission. If you've missed it all this while, the show is back on air. Not back on air like literally. Unfortunately so, we are not traversing through space :( We are just back to serving you the weekly details of all the happenings in the category.

Bug hunting contributions summary

Week 20: May 9th - May 16th

39 Contributions, 32 scored higher than 0
An average score of 58.95
15 unique contributors
No Staff Pick
No new contributors

Number of reviewed and rewarded contributions

Average score

Reports Reviewed By Reviewer

So this week we had a total of 39 contributions, 11 less than last week and an average of 58.95. The average score reflects on the quality of reports reviewed this week as compared to last week. Last week's average was 53.86, so it is safe to say there was a slight increase in the quality of the reports. Or we could say there were more crash reports in this week than the previous week.

@ckole had the most contributions. Bringing in 10 reports, 8 of which were crash cases and were scored higher than 80.

This week, the esteem app's version 2.10 stole the show. It overthrew TravelMate from last week. The repo received 12 contributions. You can look up the repo by following this link - https://github.com/esteemapp/esteem-mobile

Other project repos that stood out

If you are looking for new applications to explore, here are some repos that stood out this week

https://github.com/k3b/LosslessJpgCrop . llCrop allows you to either remove unwanted outer areas from a jpg-photo or to create zoom-ins. Just load a jpeg photo, select a rectangle and save the rectangle as a new photo-file. llCrop ("ll" stands for loss-less) can do cropping without quality-losses because it crops in the raw jpg-photo-data without the need for jpg-image-re-encoding. It also preserves embedded meta data (Exif/Iptc and xmp)
https://github.com/petermcneil/drop. Drop is an app that encourages users to spend less time on their phone and more time exploring outside. Users write messages and “drop” them in the real world for other users to find. Drop is a mixture of a treasure hunt and content creation tool. A user may choose to post a message about an interesting location, comment on an event happening, or share a story about a special location to them.

Common Mistakes And How To Fix Them

I will be highlighting the common mistakes found this week, and I will 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