What is #kill-unco?

#kill-unco is an Mozilla irc channel dedicated to trying to reduce the number of unconfirmed bugs in Mozilla's Bugzilla database.

Over time the number of these unconfirmed bugs in Mozilla's bugzilla has spiraled into the thousands. #kill-unco is an effort to try and get these bugs under control with the oldest bugs being tackled first.

Bugzilla Basics

Before going and killing unconditionals it is worth having a good understanding makes a good bug report and how to search Bugzilla for duplicates. These are well described on the following pages:

Introduction to Bugzilla and the lifecycle of a bug
General QA information
The Bug Triager's Guide describes the elments of a good report that can greatly aid the resolution of a bug.

Quick guide adding comments to unconditionals

Finding a bug:

1. Use the links at the bottom of the page to search for unconfirmed bugs on your OS
2. Pick a bug and read its description
3. Try to reproduce the bug as described by the reporter

If the bug can be reproduced:

Add a comment indicating the build you used (e.g. MozRC1 Mac). If you have the permission to, confirm the bug otherwise ask someone in #kill-unco or #mozillazine to confirm it for you.

If the bug cannot be reproduced and the bug/reporter's build is old:

Add a comment asking the reporter whether they can reproduce this bug in a newer build (see a template for this below).

Additonal guidelines

Even if you do not yet have permission to mark a bug as confirmed, it is still possible to add useful comments to aid the swift resolution of bugs. However, please add comments only when they add to a bug - the volume of mail that some Bugzilla users receive is quite large already.

Asking the reporter whether a bug still occurs when you cannot reproduce the bug

Often the best person to resolve a bug is the person who filed it in the first place. Unfortunately, many reporters are unaware that they have the power to resolve their own bugs. When you cannot reproduce a bug yourself and no one has tested in a recent build add a comment along the lines of the following:

I cannot reproduce this bug in !MozillaBuildNumber+Platform!. Reporter
(!ReporterName!), please can you check to see whether this bug is still present
in a recent build (Moz1.0 or a new nightly build). If this bug does not occur
please can you resolve it worksforme. For further information on bug writing
please see http://www.mozilla.org/quality/bug-writing-guidelines.html

Asking the reporter whether occurs in a newer build

Since this bug was reported, a newer version of Mozilla has been released.
Reporter (!ReporterName!), please can you check to see whether this bug is
still present in a recent build (Moz 1.0 or a new nightly build). If this bug
does not occur please can you resolve it worksforme.

Resolving inactive bugs

Bugs that have requested a reply from the reporter but haven't been answered may be closed after a period of one month's inactivity from the time the reporter was asked to answer.

Marking bug WORKSFORME due to request to the reporter for further information
without a response for more than one month. Reporter (!ReporterName!) if you
can reproduce this bug in a recent Mozilla (1.0 or a newer nightly) and provide
the requested information please reopen this bug.

Bug marshals (i.e. those changing/adding/closing bugs) should add themselves to the cc lists of bugs they change so they can monitor any responses and help in the resolution of bugs.

Unconfirmeds queries

Please visit The Unconfirmed Queries rather than repeatedly querying Bugzilla. This page links to saved copies of the most useful Bugzilla queries. Not only is this faster than doing the query it will also reduce the load substantially. I will put the more specified queries back up when I have improved them.