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If I go to the trouble to report a pluralisation bug, will this actually be welcome by the staff or will it just get me the usual quote from Jeff's twitter post:

Dear Next Person Who Opens a Pluralization 'Bug', I will personally come to your house and bludgeon you to death with a giant S

(or some other useless remark)?

So, are you interested in such minor bug reports or can I make more productive use of my time?

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    Well, since there has been at least one reported pluralization bug reported since that twitter post you have a fairly low chance of being bludgeoned to death, if that's what you're worried about.
    – Servy
    Jan 30, 2013 at 20:15
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    @Servy: I won't take any chances. Didn't you notice? It's a giant S. Can you imagine how that must hurt?! If it was only medium sized or at most "fairly large", but "giant"? No thanks!
    – bitmask
    Jan 30, 2013 at 20:17
  • Ik have a coldpack and some bandages ready.
    – Toon Krijthe
    Jan 30, 2013 at 20:17
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    @bitmask You misunderstand. Jeff threatened "the next person...". That next person got bludgeoned to death years ago. If he said, "every person who..." you wouldn't have a chance.
    – Servy
    Jan 30, 2013 at 20:19
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    Jeff isn't here any more. Amusingly, neither is the user who asked that question.
    – user102937
    Jan 30, 2013 at 20:20
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    @Servy: He seems to make exceptions if he really likes the person reporting the bug, so maybe everybody so far was close friends with him.
    – bitmask
    Jan 30, 2013 at 20:21

2 Answers 2

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You can report any "bug" you like.

How it's received depends a lot on how many other people are bothered by it, and how much they care.

So, for instance, if you report "If I click too quickly, Stack Overflow sets my house on fire" and 30 other people encounter the same problem, you'll probably find your report up-voted (and the bug fixed).

On the other hand, if you report "The shade of blue on Super User makes me sad" and no one else has ever encountered feelings of sadness upon viewing SU's glorious blue, you'll probably find your report either ignored completely, or down-voted for being a waste of time.

Pluralization bugs tend to fall somewhere in the middle. Generally, they don't bother very many people. Sometimes, they're clearly not even bugs. Almost always, the person reporting them hasn't really thought about how "fixing" them would make anyone's life better - they just see an "s" where, strictly-speaking, one doesn't need to exist, and post about it. YMMV...

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    Of course I can, but the attitude towards this particular class of bug-reports (at least in the past) doesn't encourage to actually spend time to report a bug. In general; I'm happy to contribute, but not if it's in vain.
    – bitmask
    Jan 30, 2013 at 20:43
  • So make sure the report is something that's actually bad - perhaps a pluralization bug that causes confusion or embarrassment - and not something trivial and uninteresting.
    – Shog9
    Jan 30, 2013 at 21:10
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I think it's really simple. If you see a bug and think it's worth fixing, report the bug. If the people responsible subsequently don't do anything with it, well, that's up to them. At least you have done your duty.

But then again, I'm comforted by the fact that given my size Jeff would need an unrealistically large S to do any damage. YMMV.

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    Challenge accepted! Going to find suitably large S.
    – Servy
    Jan 30, 2013 at 20:27

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