I also saw the READ BEFORE POSTING thread
Yes, the "Help" forum is indeed not intended for bug reporting
That sticky is quite old, too, as can be seen. It still talks of Sourceforge... [edits link]
We did have a forum dedicated to the SVN development version (which is what most people use). It somehow got incorporated into the "Development" forum when the boards were reorganised. :?
Humm... we might have to think over this again, make everything a bit more obvious.
Although the description still says "only for developers", that would be a good place for reporting a bug (if you are positive that it is a bug, not wrong usage). Usually, when someone posts a problem in there, it takes only a short time until someone works on it. Most bugs in history have been fixed the same day or the next day
I clicked on the provided link and it asked for my login details. I don't want to join something just to browse for known bugs, and possibly submit one, so I left.
Yes, we discussed that when moving from Sourceforge to BerliOS. There is no possibility to enable anonymous posting at BerliOS. At first sight, this seemed to us like dealbreaker, but then we eventually figured that it might actually be a good feature.
And indeed, this proved right. The ratio of "good" reports versus "rubbish" reports is a lot better at BerliOS than it was at Sourceforge. We do get significantly less reports (only about 1/4 as many), but the quality is a lot better.
It is only fair that a user has to spend 3 minutes registering, since the developers probably spend a lot more time than that on the request, too. People who have gone through registering, are also more willing to spend time on providing a good, usable bug description (which is essential for us to be able to fix anything).
I agree, it may seem to you as an unnecessary annoyance, but it is a quite effective measure to filter out the "dammit, nufink worx, tis sux" people (who don't provide any usable information, anyway).
Thus, we make more efficient use of our time (which is a limited resource). That's not only good for us, but good for everybody