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I see that some issues with 13.04 are starting to unravel and those that are across the issues can quickly reply or divert those questions to the appropriate links.

Are we keeping a master list of bugs/issues somewhere that we can refer to?

If not, would it be in our interest to create one?

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Ask Ubuntu is not a place to report bugs. So, if you find a question reporting bugs, flag them to be closed as Off-Topic and leave the following comment (which we use as a part of Pro-Forma Comments):

I recommend reporting this as a bug. (This question also has some good information about bug reporting.) This will probably be closed as off-topic, in accordance with the FAQ and this policy.

Otherwise, if you feel similar questions are getting repeatedly asked and you feel the need of a list to keep a track of it, then sure just make one. If others feel a similar need for it, they would chip-in with their contributions. You may use this as a template and append to it. Or if that doesn't look appropriate then just post a similar answer over here.

However, I highly doubt if such a list would be necessary. Most of the questions do not relate to a particular version of Ubuntu (13.04 in this case).

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  • Case in point, Skype issue, bug? 13.04 related? Or user error that needs help? How am I to know if its a bug? I happen to know its a bug and not Ask Ununtu material but only because I saw the first post. If we had a master list others would know. Its the way I used to run our help desk. We called it a knowledge database.
    – Meer Borg
    Apr 27, 2013 at 13:12
  • @MeerBorg: Some of the Known issues are always mentioned in Release notes. Skype is one of them. See the link. However, as I said, if you feel the need, just make one :)
    – Aditya
    Apr 27, 2013 at 13:17
  • Not to mention that we have a master list. It's called Launchpad.
    – user98085
    Apr 27, 2013 at 13:46
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Here's what you can do to help the incoming tide of questions you think might be duplicate:

  1. Look on the sidebar of the new question, more than likely the master question is there already so you can easily find it.

  2. Toss the question title into google and you'll probably find the master question near the top.

  3. Doing 2 can be hard, especially with new users and poor titles like "ubuntu 13.04 install", so if you help retitle questions to make more sense this helps humans find the duplicates too.

  4. Keep leaving "possible duplicate" comments in questions, even if you don't have close votes, the site uses crosslinking to determine FAQs, and more importantly we have a search query that mines for those comments on open questions so people can vote on them.

We have a master list of dupes somewhere but it becomes as useless as a normal list question does on the site, people are excited about it at first and then stop maintaining it. Searching is more effective for me.

Even though bug reports are offtopic we always get swamped with them at release, so it'll be a bit until we catch up, so the best we can do is keep combing through the list and doing the best we can.

We should probably keep the Skype one open since it's getting so many hits, and then close it later - that's what we did for the nvidia headers question last cycle, sometimes an issue is so popular that it makes more sense for us to have one sign post for a while instead of multiple incoming questions of the same topic.

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  • We have a master list of dupes somewhere but it becomes as useless as a normal list question does on the site, people are excited about it at first and then stop maintaining it. Searching is more effective for me. -- This is so very true. I have a file on my PC with which contains links to most of the frequently asked dupes, but its pretty much useless. I used to refer it initially but haven't touched it in last month or so. Searching is the way to go.
    – Aditya
    Apr 27, 2013 at 15:12

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