> I think the reason these docs are scattered is that the devguide is a 
> guide, not a reference manual. I don't think this patch makes sense: if 
> the tracker really needed so much text to explain how it works, then 
> the tracker would have a severe UI problem. Most people use bug
> trackers without ever reading a manual first.

This is true, however different people can figure out a different amount of things just by using and experiment with something.  While most of the tasks should be obvious, some are a bit more advanced, and even the "obvious" once might not be obvious for everyone.  So IMHO writing down a few sentences doesn't hurt.
Also the lines between developer, contributor, and user that reports an issue are not so well defined, so it might be ok to add information that are not aimed just to core-developers in the devguide.

> If someone just wants to report a bug, then sure, they shouldn't need 
> to read the dev guide 

I also don't expect them to follow the bugs page in the doc step by step.  I think they can figure out most of the steps on their own -- but if they get stuck with a specific step (e.g. registration), they should be able to find more information about it easily.  Having all the doc in the same place and a short section for each possible step would solve this, and it's IMHO better than a descriptive section of the whole process.  Similarly this applies for the description of the fields (that's why I used a list and highlighted with bold text the fields' names).

> (so I disagree with the idea of making any significant changes
>  to the bugs page in the docs)

I was planning to replace it with a paragraph that says that something like "If you think you found an issue, you can search the bug tracker at <bugs.python.org> to see if the issue is known.  If it's not, you can register to the issue tracker and report it.  For more information see the <devguide>.  It is not possible to submit anonymous reports."

> It would also give us a place to document the auto-linkification 
> rules (similar to what was done recently for the post-commit hooks).

This is already documented in the "triaging" page, in the section about the "Comment" field.


This issue was initially reported on the meta tracker[0], I moved the discussion here to get more people involved before making changes.

[0]: http://psf.upfronthosting.co.za/roundup/meta/issue119