Here is a situation:

Someone reports a bug for an opensource software (say, CPAN module).

How would you treat that?
  1. This user helping this project - by reporting the bug user wants to make the project better. Often User does not need fix for the bug, because he/she don't depend on this project or because he/she can workaround the problem
  2. User asks for help. Fix for this bug would not help the project (because it worked fine previously, before this bug was reported, so, probably no one cares about this bug, except the one who reported it). If maintainer fix this bug, he/she would help the user
Of course in some cases answer is obvious:
It's definitely not help for project if bug report is bad. This is not help also if maintainer made a note elsewhere in documentation that project is obsolete/abandoned/no bugs fixed without patches

It's also obvious the user don't need help if he/she asks to fix typo in documentation or if the bug has obvious workaround.
but how do you treat this by default?

Sometimes I see users who like the project, but they don't report bugs (probably because they don't realise that this would help project author).
And sometimes (more often) I see maintainers who don't care much about quality of their software, or even those who tell (in private talk, not in project documentation) that they would never, never fix anything not directly affecting their own use of their software

In reply to Is bug report a contribution? by vsespb

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