Re-think the patch/bug bingo links from the contributor block

why? They don't hurt anyone and are potentially useful. Maybe we should promote their use...

We will not see these in most google analytics reports because they immediately do a 301 redirect and do not display the GA code. We could see them if we analyzed which links on a page are clicked, but that doesn't catch people who use them from bookmarks. We should look at our server logs to determine the real popularity of these urls.

I no longer use them, but for a year or so they were the most common thing I visited on drupal.org

well, GA might be wrong.

However, I am not going to grep through logs to prove GA wrong.

I am not so much interested in keeping the links where they are, but I am interested in keeping the functionality and maybe expose it a bit more.

Maybe the links should be displayed on the project pages instead? Issue overview pages?

Yeah, GA won't tell us anything about who's using these links, since they redirect.

That said, I agree that "redirect to a random issue" is hardly a method for getting people involved in general.

At the same time, for a handful of us, these are extremely fun and occasionally (or sometimes frequently) we use them.

So, perhaps the compromise is to:

A) Remove the links from the "Contributor links" dashboard block
B) Add a new "Issue bingo" dashboard block that folks can optionally enable if they want to play this game

Cross referencing for interested parties. ;) #1278500: New "Novice issues" link in Contributors links looks like its only core issues

I like the idea of splitting the blocks and making the second (bingo) optional. I do hear a lot of feedback from people who use those links at Drupal conferences, but OTOH it is one of the crappiest ways for new people to get involved, because there's a good chance that you end up on an issue from 4 years ago that no one cares about. And we have "Novice" for that now.

Just to give some input here: some french people just launched this week a #1day1patch initiative where we motivate ourselves to just fix a random issue. So we frequently use the "Bug bingo" link to find one. It would be a lot more useful if it could return a recent issue instead of some 4.x / 5.x issues. I've recently started to actually close the 4.x / 5.x issues in contrib just to avoid stumbling upon them using the "bingo".
Do you think there's a way for the "bingo" to only return active issues opened less than 6 months (totally arbitrary, could be one month, could be one year) ago?

But rest assured people are using this link ;-) So let's just rename the issue in "rethink" the links, maybe?

Moving

First attempt at a patch returning recent issues in #335828: Bug Bingo for specific versions if the user specifies it.

As this topic is about Bug bingo improvements, note that github has its own mailing bug bingo: http://schneems.com/post/42508340989/open-source-in-your-inbox-code-triage.

What was the strategy behind the Bug bingo?

I never really bothered with it. Not sure who does.

Something like this could be more useful if we were able to be a bit more selective.

If we could get designers new to Drupal looking at issues marked Novice & CSS then we might be able to help get them doing something that they really enjoy.

It's when you have that mix of what you have the skills to do vs the challenge that is just a bit about that.

If you give an experienced DB Admin any of those issues they'd probably be stumped and decide after trying it a couple of times not to bother. However, if we can match up skills & interests with needs in the community, then this block might actually be useful.

I think the links were removed. I don't see them now.