On Fri, 6 Feb 2026 at 13:02, Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com> wrote:
debian-mentors is a useless list. No mentoring goes on there. The
traffic seems to be bug reports. It should be called the debian-bts list or similar.
This is wrong and should be ignored, for many reasons as explained by The Wanderer.
bug-tracking system (BTS) all go to the debian-release mailing list, see
here for the current month:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2026/02/threads.html
(I made the mistake of trying to grow my Debian skills using
debian-mentors years ago. About all that happened was, my Inbox filled with bug report spam).
Whatever happened years ago isn't relevant today.
Here's a recent example of mentoring activity on that list:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2025/12/msg00003.html
2552419.oSCCkzQOUD@soren-desktop
On Fri, Feb 6, 2026 at 12:27?PM David <bouncingcats@gmail.com> wrote:Those bug reports will have pretty much all been people asking for
On Fri, 6 Feb 2026 at 13:02, Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com> wrote:
debian-mentors is a useless list. No mentoring goes on there. The
traffic seems to be bug reports. It should be called the debian-bts list >> > or similar.
This is wrong and should be ignored, for many reasons as explained by The
Wanderer.
I disagree. The debian-mentors mailing list (< https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/>) describes itself thusly:
Newbie Debian contributors can seek help with packaging and
infrastructure projects as well as other developer-related issues here.
This list is not meant for users' questions, but for new contributors'!
Now, let's look at the last two months of activity -- JAN 2026 and FEB 2026:
JAN 2026 (https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2026/01/threads.html>)
* 56 bug report messages. With follow ups, over 100 posts
* 11 non-bug report message
FEB 2026 (partial month) (< https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2026/02/threads.html>)
* 16 bug report messages. With follow ups, over 20 posts
* 1 non-bug report message
So I stand by my statements.
On Fri, Feb 6, 2026 at 12:27?PM David <bouncingcats@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, 6 Feb 2026 at 13:02, Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com> wrote:
debian-mentors is a useless list. No mentoring goes on there. The
traffic seems to be bug reports. It should be called the debian-bts
list or similar.
This is wrong and should be ignored, for many reasons as explained by
The Wanderer.
On Fri, 6 Feb 2026 at 17:56, Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Feb 6, 2026 at 12:27?PM David <bouncingcats@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, 6 Feb 2026 at 13:02, Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com> wrote:
debian-mentors is a useless list. No mentoring goes on there. The
traffic seems to be bug reports. It should be called the debian-bts
list or similar.
This is wrong and should be ignored, for many reasons as explained by
The Wanderer.
Hi Jeff,
When I woke up this morning, before reading email, it occurred to me that
my wording above was inadequate, and I regret that, so I want to apologise
to you, and to better express myself on this point.
The thing that I want to correct is the word "ignored".
I chose that word while attempting to express my opinion to Faith (OP) that they should not take as truth your assertion that "debian-mentors is
a useless list". So I chose the word "ignored" from that perspective.
But I forgot to think about how that would read from your perspective.
I most definitely do not think that anyone who feels that they had a bad experience should be "ignored". The only way to correct problems is to
hear about them. I'm pleased that you spoke up, and I hope that some useful discussion will follow from that.
Again, I'm sorry I appeared to write that you should be "ignored", because that's incorrect, and hurtful, and that was not my intention at all.
On Fri, Feb 06, 2026 at 08:01:15AM +0300, Faith Nyakerario wrote:
How to reliably identify whether an issue should be reported against a specific package versus a general bug?
Did you read the [wiki] article about reporting bugs? If you did and need further guidance, you should provide more details about the issue at hand.
[wiki]: https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting
How a contributor can get a reported bug assigned to themselves for follow-up and fixing?
Once you filed the report, the package maintainer should take care of it.
If you have a patch you are welcome to attach it to your report and add the "patch" tag. Patches may also be forwarded later on to the bug-specific address.
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