Separate discussion forum from issue tracker
Everyone can contribute. Help move this issue forward while earning points, leveling up and collecting rewards.
Summary
A new tab "Forum" is implemented next to "Issues". This forum hosts questions and answers sorted by topics.
Background
It is very common for a popular project to receive questions filed as an issue to the issue tracker:
- How do I use ...?
- This does not work with XYZ. What should I troubleshoot...?
- I can't compile it. Am I doing something wrong?
- What do you think about integrating it with FooBar?
This increases the burden to the project maintainers and contributors during the triaging process. From the workflow of a contributor, their time is logically divided between two different activities (a) triaging defects, tasks, and merge requests and (b) providing supports (answering questions etc). A separate discussion forum would be extremely useful for this workflow.
Some benefits for the issue tracker:
- Searching the issue tracker does not result in tons of unrelated hits
- A question filed into the issue tracker can be moved to the forum
- Unrelated comments ("thread hijacking") can be spawn into its own discussion topic
Additional benefits for the discussion forum:
- Important discussion topics (FAQ, common troubles, known problems, ..) can be pinned for visibility
- A good new idea from a discussion can be spawn into a feature request (without the extra noise)