Live data from Hacker News

GitHub Issues Do's and Don'ts

medium.com

1–10 of 23 posts

Re: GitHub Issues Do's and Don'ts

#3
This should not be targeted just to github issues users but to any bug reporting audience. (On a sidenote; I like gitlab issues so much more than github's now, they have emulated trello to add dnd kanbas style to them)

Re: GitHub Issues Do's and Don'ts

#4
I think there is an exception to the don't +1 rule. I think saying +1 is fine as long as you follow up with an insightful comment. For example, explaining your specific use case for the feature because that information could help whoever implements it.

Re: GitHub Issues Do's and Don'ts

#5
post #4

I think there is an exception to the don't +1 rule. I think saying +1 is fine as long as you follow up with an insightful comment. For example, explaining your specific use case for the feature because that information could help whoever implements it.

> For example, explaining your specific use case for the feature because that information could help whoever implements it.

Then just post that.

Re: GitHub Issues Do's and Don'ts

#6
post #4

I think there is an exception to the don't +1 rule. I think saying +1 is fine as long as you follow up with an insightful comment. For example, explaining your specific use case for the feature because that information could help whoever implements it.

I needed to +1 something (as in, saying "this affects me too" literally five minutes ago, and felt bad that wasn't more constructive, but it was the only way to send the maintainer a notification about the issue. If I had just thumbsupped it, nobody would have been notified and seen that it affects more than one person.

Re: GitHub Issues Do's and Don'ts

#7
post #4

I think there is an exception to the don't +1 rule. I think saying +1 is fine as long as you follow up with an insightful comment. For example, explaining your specific use case for the feature because that information could help whoever implements it.

If you want to +1, use the voting feature. If you have a comment that will add to determining the problem or arriving at the solution, type that. +1 in comments is just noise.

Re: GitHub Issues Do's and Don'ts

#8
post #5
post #4

I think there is an exception to the don't +1 rule. I think saying +1 is fine as long as you follow up with an insightful comment. For example, explaining your specific use case for the feature because that information could help whoever implements it.

> For example, explaining your specific use case for the feature because that information could help whoever implements it. Then just post that.

> Then just post that.

Having the +1 or -1 at the start of the comment helps a reader scan through quickly to find the pro/con comments. It's easier to track the conversation.

Re: GitHub Issues Do's and Don'ts

#9
post #6
post #4

I think there is an exception to the don't +1 rule. I think saying +1 is fine as long as you follow up with an insightful comment. For example, explaining your specific use case for the feature because that information could help whoever implements it.

I needed to +1 something (as in, saying "this affects me too" literally five minutes ago, and felt bad that wasn't more constructive, but it was the only way to send the maintainer a notification about the issue. If I had just thumbsupped it, nobody would have been notified and seen that it affects more than one person.

Same here. When an issue goes unaddressed for a long time, yet the user base clearly needs it to be addressed, there has to be a mechanism by which the user base can make it annoying to the developers who continue to choose not to address it.

Making it annoying for them, e.g. by a constant reminder that many people support some action to be taken, is the whole point. That way, projects can't simply define away critical changes that users have good reason for wanting.

If it's easy for project maintainers to make a dictatorial or unilateral decision to ignore something a large body of users wants, and they can do that without paying any sort of annoyance penalty, it's super bad for the project. The mechanism of user needs no longer steers development priorities.

I see this happen often on projects where someone wants publicity or credit for their work on something open source, and so prioritizes demo-ware aspects of the project, or showy new features, over critical long-term problems, refactoring workflows, or basic utilities that are sorely needed.

Typically there are arguments of the sort, "I'm giving my development time for free, so leave me alone to work only on the aspects that I want" -- and these broadly form the basis of wanting to disallow +1-like pinging, annoying reminder behaviors.

The trouble is no one cares what your motivations are for choosing to contribute to the project. No one who uses the open source project has any reason whatsoever to care that you found some cost/benefit tradeoff to be favorable, for personal reasons, and to motivate you to contribute.

The project ecosystem generally just wants implementers who will prioritize things as-needed by large sections of the user base, and who will not complain if that means they don't get to use their "donated" time to work only on aspects they personally want.

So it creates a natural tension. Getting rid of +1-like pedancy would be bad, IMO, because it puts all of the prioritization power into the hands of the people who are choosing what to do by their mere wants rather than project needs. I'd like there to be a mechanism that penalizes want-pursuit a little more.

Re: GitHub Issues Do's and Don'ts

#10
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I needed to +1 something (as in, saying "this affects me too" literally five minutes ago, and felt bad that wasn't more constructive, but it was the only way to send the maintainer a notification about the issue. If I had just thumbsupped it, nobody would have been notified and seen that it affects more than one person.

Same here. When an issue goes unaddressed for a long time, yet the user base clearly needs it to be addressed, there has to be a mechanism by which the user base can make it annoying to the developers who continue to choose not to address it. Making it annoying for them, e.g. by a constant reminder that many people support some action to be taken, is the whole point. That way, projects can't simply define away critic…

> Same here. When an issue goes unaddressed for a long time, yet the user base clearly needs it to be addressed, there has to be a mechanism by which the user base can make it annoying to the developers who continue to choose not to address it.

instead of trying to annoy people who volunteered their own time to build something useful, why not submit a pull request instead? if it's that important to you, invest a bit more into solving the problem than just complaining online.

Post reply on HN