Weekly overview of the bug-hunting category- week 62, 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.

utopian (1).jpg

Previous Reports

2018

2019

Bug hunting contributions summary

Week 62: February 28th - March 7th

12 Contributions, 11 scored higher than 0
An average score of 53.13
10 unique contributors
1 Staff Pick

The contributions

Contributor	URL	Project	Reviewer	Score
@tdre	bug-report-for-dpoll-improving-how-polls-are-shown	dpoll	tobias-g	62.5
@snackaholic	busy-org-showstopper-in-searchbar	busy-org	fego	62.5
@riyandacountri	bop-nusic-player-version-1-1-1-error-occurred-when-re-accessing-the-file-manager-in-the-bop-music-player-application	bop-music-player-version-1-1-1	fego	42.5
@louis88	emojis-in-the-tag-bring-a-mistake-and-should-not-be-possible	esteem-surfer-206	tobias-g	45
@tobias-g	unable-to-edit-posts-redirected-to-localhost	debato	fego	68
@horpey	bookmarks-hidden-in-the-bookmark-panel	esteem-mobile	fego	38
@blockchainstudio	busy-voting-percentage-update-problem-cause-and-fix	busy-org	fego	100
@ahyar92	the-application-crashes-when-accessing-the-rate-vote-giver-list-or-1ramp	1ramp	fego	80
@mightypanda	minor-issue-with-menu-text	swapsteem	fego	14
@horpey	last-name-on-voters-info-is-half-cut	esteem-mobile	fego	27
@ahyar92	follow-unfollow-feature-does-not-work-and-failed	1ramp	tobias-g	45
@tony-duke	a-100-vote-on-a-post-redirects-me-to-my-home-page	esteem-mobile	fego	0

In the last week, we had 12 contributions to the bug-hunting category at utopian-io. We had a contribution that was staff picked.

The highest scored contributions were by @blockchainstudio and @ahyar92. Ahyar92 reported a crash while Blockchainstudio documented and reported @busy.pay's voting percentage update problem. This contribution was staff picked by Fego. The hunter in his report had observed and noted that :

Busy voting percentage isn't updated unless users haven't made a post for more than 3 days.

He would go on to detail the reason behind this and would propose a fix.

Cause

@busy.pay's voting percentage is determined by the sum of the followers' SP, about 1% for every 1 million SP. But this sum of the followers' SP can't be calculated quickly using normal API. Thus it should be cached and steemdb.com (run by jesta) had provided the information. However, it was often unstable.

Since its introduction of the "independence" from steemdb.com a month ago, the original intention was to have its own cache. The current configuration is 3 days, which is defined as VESTS_CACHE_SECONDS here https://github.com/busyorg/busy-bot/blob/master/src/constants.js#L3

Currently instead of updating if the last update is more than 3 days old, queue.setAccountFollowersVests(username, vests) is called every time and this is why VESTS_CACHE_SECONDS never expires. So unless a user hasn't written a post for more than 3 days, the cache never expires.

You can read the full report and get details of the proposed fix by checking the contribution's link : https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@blockchainstudio/busy-voting-percentage-update-problem-cause-and-fix

Weekly Average Score and number of Contributions

Chart breakdown:

The average score for this week is 53.13
This week's average is approximately on par with the 4-week average of 53.10.
It is higher than last week's average of 51.64 by 1.49, that is approximately 3% higher. Overall we can say that the quality of contributions increased this week by 3%.

Hunter Totals and Average

This week we had 10 unique contributors, 5 more than last week
There were 2 reports each from @horpey and @ahyar92. 1 each from the other 8.
@horpey is still the category's top contributor with 20 finds. That is 20 finds since the start of the year, he's closely followed by @harry-heightz with 15
@blockchainstudio has a 4 week average of 81.75, making him the contributor with the highest average score.
Approximately 42% of the contributions were scored higher than the week's average

Reports Reviewed By Reviewer

The category has received 109 contributions this year, 2019. 100 were rewarded and scored higher than 0. However, in the past 4 weeks, there were 44 bug reports scored higher than 0. These 44 were assessed by 2 reviewers.

Average review scores in the past 4 weeks

@fego has reviewed 29 contributions with an average score of 52.44.
@tobias-g has reviewed 15 contributions with an average score of 54.37.

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 scored 0

The issue you reported is OS related and is therefore not the application's fault. The operating system does not support this particular feature

My advice for cases like this is - wait for the PO to affirm your observations. I know most times the project owners are too busy and do not respond in reasonable time and so you are pushed to post on utopian without them first acknowledging whether an observed behavior is a bug or an intended. It can be frustrating but I'd still advise that hunters in the future should wait for the PO's thoughts, especially in cases where the details behind the implementation in question are sketchy.

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.

Other News

While the new guidelines are yet to be implemented, 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