Tespia.. becoming public?

Enough to know that this type of testing won't probably have huge impacts on the userbase as it would have the type I'm talking about, which is content-sided. The content-sided issues are most of the times many more than the server-sided ones.

And they need as many people as possible to find them. 600+ additions, 200+ errors. (made up the error number obviously, but you probably understand the point. there's a f'uck ton of room for error with this)

No, but at least some of the smaller bugs would be addressed, if there were less bug reports and more possibility of reading them for the staff. At this point, they can as well remove the bug report function from the site and merge it with the ticket system or forum one. Same. Thing.

Making it public makes fan sites a more reliable source for the most threatening bugs, just like they are when the content goes live.

They don't need to read bug reports to collect data. Hell they don't even need to read all the reports. They only need it as a survey for how often a bug is reported and weigh it's priority that way. The worst bugs are going to be reported more often than ones less people care about.

Public access just overflows the report system of reports they probably won't ever read. They already don't seem to read them all when they are some hundreds, think if those hundreds become thousands.

Search function, bro.

Making it public emphasizes the point that it's for hype for the simple fact that it has nearly NO point to exist other than for the reason you mentioned: server-sided testing. That, and major bug fixing before it reaches official servers. Sadly, though, the latter doesn't always happen, and I think it might happen even less if their bug report function is overflowed by reports, many of which will probably be spam. That's why it should be limited: only people REALLY willing to help and who send in good reports should stay, to allow them to be able to address a number as big as possible of bugs, from the major ones to the smaller ones. If the reports are less, and more accurate, it'd be much better for them than if they are thousands of inaccurate ones, many of which won't probably help them much with finding the origin of the issues.

You're assuming that the handful of reports they have been getting so far were accurate in the first place. You're already aware (since you've argued it in the past) that random/permanent selection doesn't mean that people know what they're talking about when they report. Making it public increases the amount of intelligent reports more than the amount of spam. There are a lot more people who couldn't previously test willing to contribute helpful feedback than the amount of people who feel like wasting the time of literally every person involved in the report process including themselves.

If you're correct, they'll just make it private again. No big deal. What's the harm in experimenting? Surely you don't think the previous testing methods were perfect in every way.

Not many 10 year olds are able to write accurate reports about big and small issues and explain accurately the steps to reproduce them.

Not many 10 year olds play this game in the first place. If the bug is serious they don't even have to do that. A lot of serious bugs are extremely simple in reproduction regardless.