Gathering experiences related to use of Github issues

[r12a]

Github issues seem like a handy way of tracking feedback for a spec for a number of reasons. We had a discussion about it in the Europe team meeting (https://www.w3.org/2015/04/14-weum-minutes.html#item09) where people shared experiences.

Questions i have, including those raised in the team europe discussion, include:

• do problems arise if people can raise comments on a spec either via github issues or email? (eg. for clreq one issue generated two separate, divergent threads on github and email recently (though it was only that one issue out of many))
• how should communication via github issues best be archived?
• if sending notifications to mailing lists, what level of notification is best (eg. all comments raised, or just new issues)?
• does acquiring a github account pose barriers to contribution?
• is github accessible by anyone in the world (eg. iiuc occasionally there may be problems connecting to github in China, although on the other hand using github really made discussion take off on clreq in spite of that)
• do you need write access to assign yourself to an issue?
• a nice thing about Tracker is that you can view a single page that shows all your products, and how many issues are open for each. Is there a way to do that for various github repos?
• is it possible to select which issues you receive notifications about? For example, would people be able to follow this issue you are reading now, but not be notified about other issues related to modern tooling?
• what is possible now, and what will be available given some work, to tie github issues into IRC?
• where's the best place to capture other questions and experiences? Is this issue the best place?
• how do we avoid scattering this information across a multitude of separate and incomplete documents, wiki pages, issues, etc, in such a way that it's difficult to find what you what and get a complete story? (this is already happening)

[cvrebert]

do you need write access to assign yourself to an issue?

Yes. Assigning anyone to an issue requires write access.

is it possible to select which issues you receive notifications about? For example, would people be able to follow this issue you are reading now, but not be notified about other issues related to modern tooling?

You can use the Subscribe/Unsubscribe button on each individual issue page to control your subscription to that issue. If you watch a repo (via the Watch button), you (among other things) basically subscribe to all existing issues and will be auto-subscribed to new issues as they are created; the Subscribe/Unsubscribe buttons still work while you are watching a repo.

[marcoscaceres]

do problems arise if people can raise comments on a spec either via github issues or email? (eg. for clreq one issue generated two separate, divergent threads on github and email recently (though it was only that one issue out of many))

It's possible - but seems highly unlikely. I often invite people to take discussion off the mailing list and onto github (I personally don't use mailing lists any more).

how should communication via github issues best be archived?

Yes. All communications can be sent to a special archive email address. This is what we do for BlueTooth CG. It's good for the public record.

if sending notifications to mailing lists, what level of notification is best (eg. all comments raised, or just new issues)?

If sending to the archive, then send all the things. In most cases, the mailing list is not used in the development process - just for administrative stuff... I can't think of any reason apart from that to use a mailing list personally.

does acquiring a github account pose barriers to contribution?

Not that I've seen... no more than having to pay money to the W3C to play or having to create a Bugzilla account (...bugzilla.... talk about pain and barrier to entry! :)).

is github accessible by anyone in the world (eg. iiuc occasionally there may be problems connecting to github in China, although on the other hand using github really made discussion take off on clreq in spite of that)

No more than usual. We can't control what nefarious governments block. In particular, they could block any site for any reason (including W3C mailing list just by mentioning Tienanmen square... oh, woops... I probably just got GitHub blocked :wink: ).

do you need write access to assign yourself to an issue?

You need to be part of a team.

a nice thing about Tracker is that you can view a single page that shows all your products, and how many issues are open for each. Is there a way to do that for various github repos?

Yes. Just click on the issues link (and you have much richer sorting from there).

is it possible to select which issues you receive notifications about? For example, would people be able to follow this issue you are reading now, but not be notified about other issues related to modern tooling?

Kinda, just hit the unsubscribe button on the right. I.e., you will receive notifications for all the things, except the ones you unsubscribe to.

what is possible now, and what will be available given some work, to tie github issues into IRC?

It would be possible through an IRC bot + GitHub API to integrate them together... but I don't know of any plans to do that. It's so easy to file bugs already that it's probably not even needed (i.e., nice to have, but meh, IMO).

where's the best place to capture other questions and experiences? Is this issue the best place?

Sure! :+1:

how do we avoid scattering this information across a multitude of separate and incomplete documents, wiki pages, issues, etc, in such a way that it's difficult to find what you what and get a complete story? (this is already happening)

I guess a good project manager and people dedicated to bringing all this together.

[r12a]

a nice thing about Tracker is that you can view a single page that shows all your products, and how many issues are open for each. Is there a way to do that for various github repos?

Yes. Just click on the issues link (and you have much richer sorting from there).

that's a nice list, but it's only specific to one repository or sub-repository - i was looking for a way to list various repos and show how many open issues are in each – see for example http://www.w3.org/International/track/products

of course, there probably also needs to be a way to indicate what repos you want in your list

[cvrebert]

@r12a I am guessing that they were referring to https://github.com/issues

[marcoscaceres]

@cvrebert yeah, that one too! :+1: