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Drupal Contributor Block

There is an optional block in Drupal.org which contains lots of useful links including my favorite, the Bug Bingo link which takes you to a random bug. There is also patch bingo and both bingos are available for core or contrib (contrib patch bingo and contrib bug bingo.

However, this "Contributor Links" block is not turned on by default. New users of the site need to edit their account and set the "Blocks Configuration" to include that block so they will see it.

The thing that is so genius to me about the bug/patch bingo mechanisms is that generally people view bugs and patches as a boring and painful task. Something that must get done but is not fun. Well, by taking you to a random bug or patch, it is kind of fun. You never know what great functionality you are going to hit upon that has a half baked patch, or that needs a patch to be made and maybe you can do that and maybe it will get committed and man does that feel nice.

If you spend 5 minutes a day bouncing on the bug bingo link and do some triage, reassign bugs to the right status/version/category or ask questions to get bugs moving along through the queue you'll 1) be much more knowledgable about the software 2)really help other users of the site get their bugs attended to and fixed. It's great for the project and it even makes bugs somewhat fun to deal with.

There are other fun links in the contributor block that are helpful such as documentation issues, support forum links, cvs messages, etc. It's a handy set of important links to get more out of Drupal and provide more to Drupal.

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