Fair points. But without looking at it myself, and for the benefit of people reading along, do you have to do that if you already have an account on the tracker? For instance, it's easy to follow issues on GitHub, but that's after you've jumped through some similar hoops to create an account.
I really wish we could have both. An interactive web frontend, and the classic email-centric bug tracker, both serving the same data. I think both have its strengths. I suppose that the job is massive given how enormous and fast-moving the first have become.
Yeah but virtually every developer in the world has already jumped through that hoop. They don't need to do it again for every project.
Also the hoop can be as simple as "click here to sign in with <other account you already have>".
There is no way to create an account for the Debian bug tracker. You have to jump through these hoops every single time you want to follow a bug.