Comment 23 for bug 1774404

> You're talking about renaming preferences.xml, and restarting Inkscape,
> right? Or is there more?

That's basically it.
The one question we need to answer is "where do I find "preferences.xml", though (and that's different for every OS - maybe even for different packages on the same OS).

> Instead of dull/dim, how about "slow"?

I could live with "slow", but from your suggestions I get a feeling we'd imply a different meaning ;-)
With this half-sentence I really did not want to say anything about the actual "speed" with which bugs were addressed. Instead I wanted to point out that at times developers might appear to ask "stupid" or "redundant" questions - seemingly intending to annoy or anger the reporter. While that's probably seldom true (although not impossible - sometimes developers really don't get the point the reporter is trying to make) this is when reporters need to be patient with developers (for their own sake) in the sense of staying positive, not in the sense of giving them more time.

> To non-developers, the phrase "before somebody gets to your report"
> could easily be interpretted as how long before someone reads it.

And it would have been interpreted correctly (sometimes there is no answer at all...)

> Almost always a report is assigned a status and/or importance within
> a few weeks

That's unfortunately far from the current status. Some bugs are "confirmed" but close to none are actually "triaged" (i.e. assigned an importance).

> But if they think it might not even be read within a year,
> that would not be a good impression to give.

So you'd rather we lied to reporters? The said truth is that there might not be an answer within a year (and instead of giving the false impression that there probably be one just to make it "look" good I'd rather tell the truth and acknowledge our bug team is understaffed.

> "....it might take a while before the issue is resolved...."

This implies it will be resolved eventually (which is yet another promise I'd prefer not to give as I'm sure we we won't be able to keep it in most cases).

We're slowly arriving at the point where I hope it get's clear why I wrote "it might take a while before somebody gets to your report" in the first place:
There's a chance somebody will look at a report and there's a chance a bug will be fixed. Both are well below 100% and combined there are more reports that stay unresolved than can be properly addressed.
Now we can write a lot on the bug reporting page - I'd prefer if we stayed true to ourselves and the people taking the time to file a report.

After all openly communicating that hands are needed might gain us contributors. I myself started contributing after my bug reports went unnoticed (or at least unresolved) for years and I first got pissed and then realized stepping up and putting in some work myself was the (only) way to get my issues adressed sooner.