I'm +1 for GH issues due to it lowering the barrier for participation. As someone who is sometimes a bit nervous about interacting with new open source projects/communities, adding a GH Issue is fairly familiar and feels inconsequential, whereas emailing everyone on a mailing list is intimidating.
On Thu, 30 Sept 2021 at 09:24, Jarek Potiuk <ja...@potiuk.com> wrote: > Just a comment on discussions: They already have answered/unanswered > filters and they have most of the same properties that "stack overflow" > questions have, > > You do not need to "track" discussions. It's great to answer and react > quickly and if you have more discussions all the community might get more > involved and start answering. It happened for us after about a month/two of > using discussions. > > The important thing is that "discussion" is a discussion - if it gets no > answer, that's perfectly fine - means that the discussion did not pick > anyone's interest. Author can still follow-up, ping other people etc. but > there is no "expectation" that discussion will reach a conclusion - it can > remain unanswered forever and simply disappear. > > Also this is no coincidence that discussions have no "total count". They > are meant to grow "forever" unlike issues, the discussions are meant to > just "be there" - sometimes with, sometimes without answers. You can see > the discussion in the last day/week/month or search them via keywords but > this is about it - there is nothing like "x discussions opened". This is > what makes the a fantastic counterpart to issues because you can convert > issues to discussions (and back) as maintainer/committer, when you see that > you miss information, or that it's unclear whether this is an issue but you > have no idea what to do next. They might simply "go away' if the author and > others are not interested - or if more information is available or if > someone else has similar observation and chimes in it can be revived at any > time. But the great thing about discussion it does not leave you with the > impression that you have such a big number of "open issues" that are > unhandled. Sometimes leaving the discussion open is the right "final state" > for it. > > I did not realize that when we first started to use discussion but "convert > issue to discussion" is the single best feature of GitHub issues for me. It > does not really "close" the issue (which might be seen as rude and you have > to have strong arguments to close an issue), but it gives a clear > information to the author and whoever is looking at the discussion that it > needs extra effort, clarification, digging (usually from the author but > maybe from other interested parties) to qualify it as real issue. > > We went down from ~880 to 814 opened issues over the last month or so (and > we continue our downard route in Apache Airflow) once we made it a bit more > difficult to enter the issue (via detailed issue template) and started to > promote discussions in the templates and started to actively convert issues > into discussion when they qualify as such, > > J. > > > On Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 4:04 AM Weston Pace <weston.p...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > +1 for issues because I believe it would lower the barrier for entry. > > > > I'm +0 on discussions, they can work but would require more active > > curation / labeling as they cannot be closed so an "answered / > > unanswered" label would probably be needed. > > > > > I think I already get e-mails from issues but > > > have them filtered out with the rest of other github messages, I'm not > > sure > > > if it is easy to split them out. > > > > Issues will absolutely be lost in the flood of notifications you would > > get from watching the arrow repo. However, you can do a custom watch > > that targets only issues. This may be an alternative for those that > > prefer an issue-like workflow. For me personally, I've monitored > > issues in the Zulip feed for Github. That being said I went ahead and > > turned on an issues-only watch to try that out. > > > > > I took a few minutes to browse the archives [1]. It seems to me that > > > the user@ list is working extremely well. People get answers quickly, > > > problems are converted into JIRA cases, and the discussion often > > > references existing information sources. > > > > I would add we have a pretty decent traffic rate for github issues > > today. We get a fair number of issues opened even though our issue > > template says "Please ask questions at u...@arrow.apache.org". > > > > On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 9:37 AM Julian Hyde <jh...@apache.org> wrote: > > > > > > I'm not for or against this proposal. > > > > > > I took a few minutes to browse the archives [1]. It seems to me that > > > the user@ list is working extremely well. People get answers quickly, > > > problems are converted into JIRA cases, and the discussion often > > > references existing information sources. > > > > > > I want to thank all of the community members who answer questions. No > > > doubt it takes considerable time and effort. > > > > > > Julian > > > > > > [1] https://lists.apache.org/list.html?u...@arrow.apache.org > > > > > > On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 2:14 PM Phillip Cloud <cpcl...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > > > > > > On Wed, Sep 29, 2021 at 3:08 PM Antoine Pitrou <anto...@python.org> > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Le 29/09/2021 à 20:51, Micah Kornfield a écrit : > > > > > >> > > > > > >> Cons: > > > > > >> - Github is a not a mailing-list and does not integrate well in > a > > normal > > > > > >> e-mail workflow. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Would a mailing list mirror of the issues work for you (I guess > it > > would > > > > > > require an extra click). I think I already get e-mails from > > issues but > > > > > > have them filtered out with the rest of other github messages, > I'm > > not > > > > > sure > > > > > > if it is easy to split them out. > > > > > > > > > > If there's an e-mail notification to user@ (or another place) > > whenever a > > > > > new issue is created, containing the full issue text, I guess that > > would > > > > > work. > > > > > > > > > > > > > I was under the impression that you can reply to a GitHub issue > > directly > > > > from email, as long as you subscribe to issues for a repo. Is that > not > > the > > > > case? > > >
