[HN Gopher] GitHub Discussions is out of beta
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       GitHub Discussions is out of beta
        
       Author : bpierre
       Score  : 76 points
       Date   : 2021-08-18 17:16 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.blog)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.blog)
        
       | munchkinship wrote:
       | I guess non-developers won't be able to participate in the
       | discussions without a $21/month license if I'm on the Enterprise
       | plan.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | systemvoltage wrote:
       | All these features infested with emojis and negative space makes
       | SourceHut such a refreshing take at UX/UI that is utilitarian,
       | straightforward, ultra-functional and zero-tolerance for trendy-
       | designer-bullshit. Exactly what engineering tools should be like.
       | Unfortunately, I am in the minority here and most people find the
       | UX/UI of Sourcehut ancient, unadorned and bland - IMO that's a
       | feature, not a bug. Check it out: https://sourcehut.org/
        
         | jtl999 wrote:
         | Does SourceHut support other change workflows than just email
         | patches or has anyone else integrated such? (i.e a "PR" style
         | module, Gerrit, etc.)
        
         | leonsmith wrote:
         | Strongly disagree and I've noticed this is a common trait
         | amongst developers. I think it stems from the fact they are
         | more comfortable on the CLI and are used to poor interfaces
         | that they more easily justify a sub-par UX. Just look at how
         | many HN "readers" are out there because this site subscribes to
         | the same philosophy
        
           | saagarjha wrote:
           | Hacker News readers exist mostly because this site's users
           | tend to skew heavily towards people who would make such
           | things.
        
           | frenchyatwork wrote:
           | Mild disagree. Emoji aren't that bad, and certainly have
           | their uses; however, most of the time they look dramatically
           | different than the surrounding text, and can be quite
           | distracting. If they're trying to communicate something
           | important, that works fine, but often the important stuff is
           | buried in the text, and the emoji simply hurt the
           | readability.
           | 
           | Also, there's an issue sometimes whereby people who have
           | nothing worthwhile to say thing that adding a few emoji will
           | now make their message worthwhile...
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | qmarchi wrote:
         | Kind of a salty take on it. Personally, I appreciate the
         | emojis, they allow a more dense information transfer when used
         | correctly, like when reacting to a chat message.
         | 
         | Similarly, with Github Discussions, each emoji has a distinct
         | meaning and can convey the topic with many less pixels. Ex, I
         | can use a as a replacement for "Feature request", as a
         | replacement for "Bug/Issue", and for "Vulnerability".
         | 
         | Now if you start shoving them as the only way to communicate
         | something, there's your problem.
        
           | frenchyatwork wrote:
           | FYI, HN strips certain unicode that it thinks are emoji.
        
         | bastardoperator wrote:
         | I might argue there is no UI/UX being presented on sourcehut,
         | just the presentation of data in different colors and some
         | buttons. Maybe that's a feature, less is more, I can certainly
         | appreciate it, but the GitHub UI is good and it's why nearly
         | everyone is copying it, like the visibility feature on sr.st.
        
       | ziml77 wrote:
       | I noticed the beta version of this feature last week. I like that
       | there's finally a place to ask questions about a project. To do
       | it before you either had to abuse the issue tracker for it, join
       | a Discord server linked in the README, or hope that someone who
       | knows enough about the project is active on StackOverflow to
       | answer you there. All 3 of those not too great options
       | discouraged me from ever asking for help.
        
       | alberth wrote:
       | Given that GitHub is a large Ruby on Rails app, I'm surprised we
       | haven't seen Microsoft doing more to improve the performance of
       | Ruby language given they are one of a small handful of companies
       | that have deep language/compiler talent.
       | 
       | (Don't take this as me knocking Microsoft. The speed of
       | development on GitHub, VS Code and even Microsoft 365 has been
       | phenomenal.)
        
         | cfeliped wrote:
         | VS Code is really great for the amount of features it has.
         | 
         | GitHub is okay-ish.
         | 
         | But Office 365? Teams is prob one of the worst apps I use
         | nowadays. It consumes so much memory and cpu you would think
         | it's actually mining crypto.
         | 
         | Outlook is also a joke.
         | 
         | Excel got better IMO.
         | 
         | No strong opinions for other apps.
        
           | pineconewarrior wrote:
           | Curious - what is your preferred Git platform? We're about to
           | migrate away from Bitbucket for... a lot of reasons.
        
             | cfeliped wrote:
             | I use GitLab professionally.
             | 
             | It used to be light years ahead of GitHub, but with
             | actions, code spaces, private repos and Jira like stuff
             | being released in GH that's not the case anymore.
             | 
             | IMO you can't go wrong with either GitLab or GitHub
             | nowadays, both are great at what they do.
        
           | alberth wrote:
           | Re: Microsoft/Office 365 - I was referring to their
           | development to shift to cloud first strategy. They still
           | haven't made online collaboration as seamless as Google yet -
           | but given them not wanting to break backward (onprem/file)
           | capability, they are doing a good job.
           | 
           | I do agree Teams is trying to be a jack of all trades master
           | of none at the moment.
        
           | GSGBen wrote:
           | Do you mean the web-based Outlook? I find the traditional
           | desktop Outlook is unbeaten for business email/calendar.
           | Strongly agree on Teams though.
        
         | ksec wrote:
         | I think they are still operate pretty much like a separate
         | entity. But yes, I really wish there are at least 2 full time
         | compiler developer at Github working on RubyVM.
        
           | nojvek wrote:
           | Stripe is probably the second biggest Ruby place after
           | GitHub. They have pretty good sized teams working on Ruby
           | tools like Sorbet.
        
         | JamesSwift wrote:
         | If it ain't broke why dedicate complicated time to fixing it?
        
         | joelbluminator wrote:
         | They contribute a lot to Rails though.
        
           | iamricks wrote:
           | yup Github and Shopify are a big part of RoR
        
       | ggoo wrote:
       | Anywhere I can see this in action?
        
         | kasperni wrote:
         | https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions
        
         | verdverm wrote:
         | github: https://github.com/github/feedback/discussions
         | 
         | meta:
         | https://github.com/github/feedback/discussions/categories/di...
         | 
         | cuelang: https://github.com/cue-lang/cue/discussions
        
       | dessant wrote:
       | Is there a way to learn that an issue has been converted to a
       | discussion using the GitHub REST API?
       | 
       | I'm having problems with GitHub actions attempting to comment on
       | converted issues that no longer accept comments, and the API does
       | not seem to offer a way to identify that an issue has been
       | converted to a discussion.
        
       | kaycebasques wrote:
       | Back when this first came out I pondered whether I could use it
       | as a replacement for the comment section on technical docs. E.g.
       | rather than putting a Disqus on the bottom of your doc, create a
       | Discussion, and put a link to the Discussion at the bottom of
       | your doc instructing readers to leave comments there.
        
         | lights0123 wrote:
         | With Issues (because Discussions weren't out yet when this was
         | made) instead: https://utteranc.es/
        
       | theptip wrote:
       | Interesting. I wonder how this will interact with StackOverflow.
       | 
       | On one hand, it will tend to give large projects with established
       | communities a centralized location to handle questions which
       | otherwise would be in a StackOverflow tag. Perhaps core
       | developers would be interested in the community management
       | features that Discussions offer, which would be harder to do in a
       | world where questions get delegated to SO.
       | 
       | And potentially linking to the actual version/release that fixes
       | a question would allow maintainers to whittle out the
       | stale/deprecated answers that can bring down the average quality
       | on SO.
       | 
       | On the other hand, it seems like small/medium size projects might
       | suffer from a brain drain effect; if most React experts
       | stop/reduce checking SO, and start/increase checking
       | github.com/facebook/react/discussions, then there's probably less
       | chance at the margin of a React expert seeing something tagged in
       | SO as React,SmallReactLib.
       | 
       | How do folks think this is going to pan out?
        
         | seph-reed wrote:
         | My gut reaction is that it looks a lot like centralization. And
         | centralization almost always wins, and almost always for the
         | worst reasons.
         | 
         | I can easily see peoples questions being buried/deleted/marked
         | as "nofix" or other passive aggressive stuff like that.
         | 
         | I can easily see people who aren't on the project being less
         | likely to have input than they would on SO.
         | 
         | I can also easily see a lot less discovery happening.
         | 
         | But all of these things that make a Q&A into yet another
         | virtual fiefdom are exactly what will make it win out: it will
         | be the developers own little fiefdom; they'll be there more.
        
         | jms55 wrote:
         | I think this is helpful because it keeps the "issues" tab
         | cleaner. It's a place to discuss initial ideas without finding
         | the maintainers on discord or something, to get feedback on
         | whether the idea is worth implementing a PR for or not,
         | etc.Similarly, it can be used for announcements about the
         | project, polls to the community, etc.
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-18 23:02 UTC)