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Using GitHub Discussions

GitHub Discussions is a feature designed to be the community forum for your project, right alongside your code. It provides a dedicated space for conversations, Q&A, and idea sharing, keeping your issue tracker clean and focused on actionable tasks.

Issues vs. Discussions: What’s the Difference?

Understanding when to use Issues and when to use Discussions is key to keeping your project organized.

• GitHub Issues are for tracking specific, actionable tasks. They have a clear “done” state.
  • Use for: Bug reports, feature requests with a clear scope, specific to-do items.
  • Example: “The login button is broken on Safari.”
• GitHub Discussions are for open-ended conversations. They don’t have a “done” state and are about exploration and communication.
  • Use for: Q&A, sharing ideas, general feedback, showing off what you’ve built.
  • Example: “What do you think about adding a dark mode?” or “How do I connect the app to a different database?”

By directing non-actionable conversations to Discussions, you prevent your issue tracker from becoming cluttered with questions and long debates, allowing you to focus on the work that needs to be done.

How to Enable and Use Discussions

1. Enable Discussions: In your repository settings, under the “Features” section, check the box for “Discussions.”

2. Configure Categories: Set up categories to organize your community’s conversations. Good starting categories include:

   • Announcements: For maintainers to share project news.
   • Q&A: For users to ask questions. This category has a feature to mark an answer as correct.
   • Ideas: For proposing and debating new features.
   • Show and Tell: For community members to share what they’ve built with your project.

See: Managing categories for discussions

Best Practices for Maintainers

1. Seed the Conversation: When you first enable Discussions, post a welcome message or an announcement to get things started.

2. Be Active: Participate in discussions, answer questions, and encourage community members. Your engagement sets the tone.

3. Moderate as Needed: As with any community forum, be prepared to moderate to ensure conversations remain respectful and productive, in line with your Code of Conduct.

4. Convert Issues to Discussions: If a user opens an issue that is actually a question or a broad idea, you can convert it to a discussion. This moves the conversation to the right place while preserving the content.

5. Convert Discussions to Issues: Conversely, if a discussion evolves into a concrete, actionable task (like a well-defined feature request), you can create an issue directly from the discussion to track the work.

By embracing GitHub Discussions, you can foster a vibrant community, gather valuable feedback, and maintain a clean, organized workflow for managing your project’s development.

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