I want to help but...

[xlsg]

Specific question:
I have experienced joomla1.0.3 bug artificact 1694.  I thought it might be helpful to the project developers to know that this occurs when using PHP 4.3, not just PHP 5 (as described in the artifact). Perhaps not, but supposing it was, would I need to create a second artifact to record this information?

General comment:
As others have noted in this forum developer.joomla.org is user unfriendly. This is not really a matter of whether this is designed for coders vs non-coders. In order to benefit from the large user community the developers need to have a mechanism for getting good feedback from the users. This forge ain't it.

[alwarren]

I agree. But in the interim, you can use the Quality and Testing forums here - http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/board,179.0.html. I think the core team is watching that one pretty close.

[Jinx]

The forge is targetted towards gathering user input. The forge is a tool to accomodate group development and project management. U can use the different forums to provide input and discuss bug and problems.