McClatchy Digital Subscription Platform Unstructured Exploratory Bug Hunt

Hello Topcoders! Welcome to the McClatchy Digital Subscription Platform Unstructured Exploratory Bug Hunt. This is a Bug Hunt style competition.

If this is your first competition on Topcoder do not fear - we have all the instructions, you need to participate in this challenge specification and in the challenge forums.Click the register button on this page to sign up, and then you’ll be granted access to the challenge forums where you can find documentation and ask questions.

IMPORTANT - This challenge has more than one prize placement! Prizes will be awarded to the top 3 scorers as follows:
1st place: $600 | 2nd place: $300 | 3rd place $200

Bonus: We will give $25 for every person who submits, up to the first 20 submitters as a bonus. To qualify you must provide at least one valid and accepted issue.

ABOUT THE APPLICATION

The McClatchy Company is a publicly traded American publishing company based in Sacramento, California. It operates 29 daily newspapers in 14 states and has an average weekday circulation of 1.6 million and Sunday circulation of 2.4 million. In 2006, it purchased Knight Ridder, which at the time was the second-largest newspaper company in the United States (Gannett was and remains the largest). In addition to its daily newspapers, McClatchy also operates several websites and community papers, as well as a news agency, McClatchyDC, focused on political news from the U.S. capital.

Users who consume local news in cities like Miami, Sacramento, Raleigh, Charlotte etc. Mostly US based, but some are from International market - like Caribbean readers for Miami. Most of them come as anonymous users from various sources like clicking on news story in Facebook, through Google Search, through Apple news, etc. and some knows users who have given their email in the site - who can come via Newsletters.

Once these users who have not paid for the news come to the site, McClatchy is interested in converting them to paid subscribers giving various Subscription options. These people who are interested in Subscribing pay using their credit card and typically sign up for a promotional offer of $1.99 per month (which then converts to $12.99 per month from the 2nd month unless they cancel) or $129 for Annual Subscription. Sometimes McClatchy does promotional offers like $25 for 6 months. McClatchy continues to keep the Subscribers engaged with Rewards (multiple tiers like Airlines for the loyalty). Many of the users also read the e-Edition of the newspaper (which is a digital replica of the physical newspaper)

Read the challenge specification carefully and watch the forums for any questions or feedback concerning this challenge. Let us know if you have any questions in the challenge forum!

 

WHAT TO TEST

Scope:

In this challenge you have to test the Digital subscription process to validate it is fast, easy, and works flawlessly. Also you have to test the Digital subscription process on Smart phones, Tablets and Desktop. Need to test the Subscription, E-Edition, Rewards and Newsletter process.

1. Exploratory testing should be done around all areas associated with McClatchy’s digital subscription platform. Any feedback regarding user flows, bugs, performance issues, etc. is the goal of the engagement. All the bug reports that are not related to the 'Subscription, E-Edition, Rewards and Newsletter Process' will be REJECTED.
2. Test the Digital subscription process to validate it is fast, easy, and works flawlessly across different browsers on Smart phones, Tablets and Desktops.
3. Test the Subscription, E-Edition, Rewards and Newsletter process.
4. Users pay for various Subscription options using their credit card and sign up for promotional offer of $1.99 per month to $129 for Annual Subscription.

Subscriptions generally happen in 2 ways.

1. Clicking directly on the “subscribe” at the top of the masthead on all McClatchy properties
2. By hitting the paywall. The paywall is hit when an anonymous user views more than 6 articles in 1 month. There are various ways to subscribe and different offers that are presented. When hitting the paywall, the option to “Subscribe with Google” is presented as well as the ability to utilize social sign in from Facebook, Twitter, or Google.

Validating all of these methods are working are critical to gain new subscribers with as little effort as possible by the customer. A document with detailed information about the subscription process is attached in the forum.

• Test Application(s): https://www.sacbee.com/ | http://www.charlotteobserver.com/ | http://www.miamiherald.com/ | http://www.kansascity.com/
• Members need to use their personal credit cards to purchase subscriptions (for the purpose of testing). Those who purchased a subscription during the test phase can update details in the google docs URL below to issue refunds when the testing cycle is concluded. Subscription Form
• Even though the sub-domain are different some links are doing the same thing across all the provided links, so DON’T duplicate the same issue across the sites, use labels if you find the same issue across different sites. All the other tickets will be marked as Duplicate.
• Primary target device(s): Desktop (Mac and Windows), Mobile and Tablet
• Browser Requirements: Latest Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE11+ /Microsoft Edge on Windows/macOS.
• IE10 and below versions are out of scope.
• Safari on Windows is out of scope.
• We are accepting UX/UI suggestions
• Content Bugs: Content, Spelling and Grammar, Tooltips, Missing/Broken Images/Videos, Broken links on news articles, blog posts, products details pages, FAQ, Privacy, Terms and Conditions and articles are OUT OF SCOPE.
• Also other minor UI, Usability issues that are not affecting the core functionality of the application are likely to be REJECTED.
• An edge case would be anything that does not reflect typical user behaviour. They are accepted according to the impact to the end-user and based on the workarounds available.

HOW TO CREATE NEW BUG REPORTS

1. Create an account on GitHub (if you do not already have one): https://github.com
2. You can get access to the GitHub repo using ‘Self Add to repository’ tool specified in the challenge forum thread to create new bugs OR If you are getting 404 error, request access to the repo using correct forum thread.
3. There is an issue template whenever you click New Issue in GitHub. Please use "Bug_Report" template.
4. Issues/Bugs found in this application/App must create here: (URL for creating Bugs) https://github.com/topcoderinc/mcclatchy-digital-subscription/issues. DON'T use any other link to create new issues OR submit a document, they won't be counted and won't be paid.
5. Please label issues with the appropriate browser type and mode, bug type, and platform type.  The labels can be viewed here: https://github.com/topcoderinc/mcclatchy-digital-subscription/labels

ISSUE REPORTING GUIDELINES

For each report of a limitation or bug, we need the following information:

1. Subscription Type 1 MONTH TRIAL/ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION/DAY PASS
2. Username/Password used to login to the site
3. Steps to reproduce, including any needed information (Must list all the steps that need to reproduce the bug, DON'T list only the URL without test data)
4. Current results before the bug is fixed
5. Expected results, after the bug, is fixed
6. If it is a UI bug attach a Screenshots (Mark the area where the bug is) | Functional Bug - Videos | Crash - Console/Crash Logs
7. Attach the high-level labels. If you are selecting multiple labels (Platform/Device); You have to provide screenshots for each and every Device/Platform you have selected; If not Bug will be REJECTED.[Eg: If you select labels Device: iPhone, Device: Android you have to provide screenshots of all the device types you have selected]. Same applies to Platform
8. Attach detailed platform, device model (iPhone, iPad, Laptop, Desktop), operating system (Window 7 64bit, iOS 11, Android 7.0 etc.), Frequency in the issue detail.  The high-level labels aren’t sufficient for issue replication and diagnosis.  
9. If it is a comparison, You must provide the URL and Screenshot/video of that location.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Missing or Incorrect details to ANY of the above fields will mark the bug report as INCOMPLETE. 

For example Incorrect Steps, Missing Screenshot/Screencast (If it is a UI issue, You have to mark it on the screenshot), Incorrect Actual and Expected results etc.

IMPORTANT NOTICE

• Follow the standard Topcoder Bug Hunt Rules
• If you do not properly document your bug reports, they will likely be rejected due to lack of information or documentation. If you submit the same bug in multiple areas/pages, (for instance, Same validation issue of a form can be found in different pages/sections) you will likely get credit for the original bug report only. The others will all be closed as duplicates.
• If you duplicate an issue on a platform or browser that hasn’t been tested yet, you should create a new issue and add a link/reference in the issue description to the existing issue number. Our copilot will review these items and consolidate them later. Please don’t make adjustments or change labels of existing issues logged by other competitors.
• DON'T RE-OPEN the issues in the review phase and anyone who RE-OPENS a ticket will be disqualified from the challenge.
• DON'T EDIT OR ATTACH FILES to the issues in the review phase and anyone who is doing this will be disqualified from the challenge.
• If Mobile and Tablet testing are available DON'T create the same issue on different platforms; instead, merge them into one; All the others will be marked as Duplicate.
• You must not edit the bug report once created, so make sure you enter all the details at the time you create the issue, otherwise, your issue will be moved to the end of the queue. If you really need to edit an issue you must use the comments section for this (i.e. add a comment to describe any changes you want to make to the issue), and we'll decide whether the changes are major enough to move the issue to the end of the queue. You are allowed to add screenshots in the comments section though, assuming your issue report contains all the details when created.
• You must specify the test data you have used in the 'Reproduction Steps', All the issues will be marked as 'Incomplete', if the correct test data is not provided.
• There will be no appeals phase. The decision of PM/co-pilot for validity and severity of each filed issue will be final.

SCORING

• Scoring will be based on the number of bugs by weight.  Be sure to correctly attach a weight to your bug.  The delivery team has the right to change a severity at their discretion.
• Scoring is directly proportional to weight:  Weight 1 = 1 point, Weight 10 = 10 points.
• The participant with the highest score will win the 1st place - $600 the member who gets the 2nd most points will win $300 and third place will win $200.
• Only verified issues will be counted.  Tickets created for enhancements or that are not bugs will not be counted. Duplicate issues will be closed and not counted. Log issues according to the guidelines above issues that do not follow these guidelines may be rejected due to lack of information.
• For challenge scoring, the user with the most verified issues will be selected as the winner. Submitters that do not take 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place will be paid $5 for each non-duplicate and verified issue up to a maximum of the 3rd place prize. If two users submit the same issue, the user that submitted the issue first will receive credit.
• Please focus on functionality/UI testing based on the requirements, all bug reports based on your own assumptions will be rejected.
• We'll decide whether a bug is valid or not based on our knowledge about the app, it's totally up to us.

ISSUE WEIGHTS

• Functional Issues - 10 Points
• User Interface Issues - 4 Points
• Usability/UX Issue - 2 Points

TIPS

Some of the tips helpful for the contest:

• Submitting what is obviously the same issue multiple times with small variations will only annoy the reviewer that has to sort through all the issues and will only count as one issue anyway. If it's less obvious if it is the same issue or not, use your best judgment and the reviewers will do the same.
• Keep an eye on the issues being submitted by other participants to minimize the time you may be spending on duplicate efforts. Knowing what has already been reported will allow you to better focus your time on finding yet undiscovered issues.
• Double check your steps to reproduce and test cases to make sure they are clear. Make sure your steps include the creation of any necessary data.

Final Submission Guidelines

Submit all your bugs directly to GitHub. When you are done with your submissions please submit a .txt file to Topcoder Online Review using the Submit to this Challenge button BEFORE the Submission phase ends. In this file include:

• Your name

• Email address

• topcoder handle (The one displayed in the top right corner near the Profile picture)

• GitHub handle used to raise the issues. (Login to GitHub and click on the Profile picture > Your Profile. Check the URL https://github.com/[Your Username]

- ALL THE SUBMISSIONS WITHOUT ABOVE INFORMATION WILL BE REJECTED AND WON'T BE PAID.
- IMPORTANT: Submit the above details before the Submission Phase ends. If you can't submit due to technical difficulties within the Submission Phase please email your submission with above details to support@topcoder.com
- Participants who haven't submitted will not be paid
- DON'T use any other link to create new issues OR submit as document, they won't count and won't be paid.