Hi! I came across this post https://issues.guix.gnu.org/76503 in Guix where they discuss how to improve the contributor experience, and in particular what technical changes they are doing.
Guix is interesting as they use a clone of Debbugs as their bug tracker at https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=guix. Apparently they too noticed that the UI is lacking to say the least, and they created MUMI to use as an additional view into Debbugs. This can be seen in action in https://issues.guix.gnu.org/ with docs at https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Debbugs-User-Interfaces.html Now they decided to ditch Debbugs completely and replace email-only workflow with using Codeberg (Forgejo). I am not saying Debian should do this, or replace Debbugs with Salsa issues. We don't even develop using a monorepo so the solutions don't apply 1:1. But there are a lot of similarities and e.g. https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2025/guix-user-and-contributor-survey-2024-the-results-part-3/ are interesting to read as an in-depth analysis of how to attract and retain contributors. It will be interesting to see how the move away from Debbugs affects contributor activity and quality in Guix going forward. Debian has certainly done many things right in the past 30 years, but treatment of new contributors is currently pretty harsh, considering how many cracks and false turns they need to overcome on to become regular contributors.
