If you have to sign up to file a bug, the bug is going to be important to you. You're likely to put a bit more effort into making sure the report is well-written.
If you already have a github account, you will probably simply do a drive-by bug report on anything that looks like a bug.
Bug reports are the lowest level of "contributions", and losing some people filing them isn't a big loss.
> If you have to sign up to file a bug, the bug is going to be important to you.
This. That's the reason why bugzillas rock! Visit the GNOME bugzilla, Red Hat bugzilla and even Mozilla bugzilla for instance and have a look. Its always organized, focused and in problem-solving mode. Unlike Github issues, people don't stampede there to just say "Hi" or "How may I use this thingy?", they bring their actual problems in all seriousness (because they have to register, verify their emails and then login just for the sake of posting an issue)
Bugzilla is a little too unfriendly, the search can be a pain so its hard to know sometimes whether you're submtting a dupe.
And of course even with the best of intentions, most issues raised will still be NotBugs or other time wasters. (I'm guilty of that myself, just yesterday I reported what I thought was a bug in Firefox but turned out to be chrome and IE not implementing the spec and us using their incorrrect behaviour).
> just yesterday I reported what I thought was a bug in Firefox but turned out to be chrome and IE not implementing the spec and us using their incorrrect behaviour
That's still loads better than the average issue reporter on Github issues. Though it was not a bug in your case, your effort was genuine and deserved some real attention. If this were the github tracker, your genunie question would have been piled and lost under tons of useless ones.
> Bug reports are the lowest level of "contributions", and losing some people filing them isn't a big loss.
No, spelling fixes are the lowest level of contributions. Bug reports are actually useful. Yes, there's lots of noise, and reducing that noise is great. But without bug reports, all of our free software would be crap. It would only work for us.
If you have to sign up to file a bug, the bug is going to be important to you. You're likely to put a bit more effort into making sure the report is well-written.
If you already have a github account, you will probably simply do a drive-by bug report on anything that looks like a bug.
Bug reports are the lowest level of "contributions", and losing some people filing them isn't a big loss.