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mlr-org / mlr3pipelines

Dataflow Programming for Machine Learning in R
https://mlr3pipelines.mlr-org.com/
GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0
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Issue templates #690

Closed pat-s closed 1 month ago

pat-s commented 2 years ago

Was/is the org-wide template so bad that it must be removed/overriden? Feedback is always welcome...

The current one essentially does nothing (including not helping users how to submit a "good" issue) and looks misplaced. Opening a blank issue was supported before as well via "Open a blank issue".

mb706 commented 1 year ago

I am personally not bothered by getting "bad" issues. If someone is on the edge between submitting an issue or not submitting it, I would prefer for them to submit it. I feel like an overly imposing issue template could scare away inexperienced users, or users that are too busy to read two pages of help text just to tell me that some minor thing they don't really care about doesn't work. If the issue is missing information I can always ask for it later.

I added the blank issue template after someone at the workshop (don't remember who) told me that they were struggling to submit a short quick reminder issue to their own repo without adding reprex-code. Yes, there is the "Open a blank issue" option, but Github doesn't exactly make it prominent. It seemed bad enough to be a stumbling block for someone in our group, and I imagine that some less motivated users would have given up at that point.

There is obviously a tradeoff between keeping away or potentially improving less-useful, low-effort issues on the one side, and not putting too much of a burden on people who give us useful feedback for free on the other. The issue template policy then depends on (1) the person who has to deal with the issues and (2) the quantity of new issues. Regarding (1), I prefer getting more issues and filtering less, I can deal with ten spam issues if it gives me one more piece of useful feedback I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Regarding (2), mlr3pipelines currently doesn't get that many new issues per week anyway. This may be different for other repos: I don't have a feel for how many issues are reported in other repos, and how much other maintainers care about quality vs. quantity. Should I get overwhelmed by too many low-quality issues in mlr3pipelines at some point, I imagine I would reinstate the org-wide template. Unfortunately, mlr3pipelines is not that popular yet :-)

pat-s commented 1 year ago

I feel like an overly imposing issue template could scare away inexperienced users,

The issue template aims to guide unexperienced users by showing them how to provide a good issue. I'd rather favor no issue at all than a badly worded/formatted/low quality one. Mileage varies, though. People like to dump plain text issues (especially when projects become larger and attract more unexperienced users) without even formatting the code parts, this is simply disrespectful.

users that are too busy to read two pages of help text just to tell me that some minor thing they don't really care about doesn't work.

There's always the "open blank issue" option. The issue template does not block the creation a "quick issue". While it is smaller, it is clearly visible. TBH often enough I think people just need to read more closely what's on the screen before clicking things :(

It seemed bad enough to be a stumbling block for someone in our group, and I imagine that some less motivated users would have given up at that point.

The issue template policy then depends on (1) the person who has to deal with the issues and (2) the quantity of new issues.

1) well, yes and no. In an organization structure, things are a bit different compared to personal repos. Pipelines is already doing so many things different than all other mlr-org repos, often for low-level reasoning. The more it gets, the more pipelines feels like a satellite project. 2) I don't think that this point applies to this discussion.

mlr3pipelines currently doesn't get that many new issues per week anyway.

Again: it is not about a single project but about the organization as a whole. I know you prefer doing things on your own and collaborating less with others but such little things (summed up) just really make me go sad/mad :( I am also well aware that we have defined the issue template without asking you first. However, this was discussed as a team during our meetings (which you never join). If you don't, accepting such org-wide changes is the natural flow of an organization. Overriding these then silently afterwards is a very egoistic move.

I am well aware of my public rant here. Yet these kind of (little) things really make me loose the joy of working in an org-wide FOSS project to some degree. Probably the same applies the other way round due to such comments of mine here but I am not sure there is an easy solution to this.

mlr3pipelines has almost 100 issues and 14 PRs as of right now, it is one of the projects which would probably profit most from high-quality issues (and some clean up in general). But nobody even dares to touch this repo due to all the little specialities in it/around it.