[meta] Duplication with isaacs/github

[jayvdb]

There is a lot of overlap in these issues with https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues . Is it intentional/ desirable? Should issues be cross-linked in the two repos?

Adding a CONTRIBUTING.md would be helpful to indicate whether this repo is desiring new issues, and how they should be filed. c.f. https://github.com/isaacs/github/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

Perhaps creating a .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md in this repo would be good, to indicate to search there first, and also shows of the new functionality added in https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull-request-templates .

[axd1967]

• Link to Dear Github? isaacs/github#551 (comment)
• as a result, some users duplicate stuff: Please add form input to issue templates. Also, please add more issue templates. isaacs/github#822 ...

[cirosantilli]

Proposal: close the issues here, and on the README clearly redirect people to Isaacs.

Migrate all existing issues there.

Rationale:

1. more issues there, so migration is easier.
2. this is designed as a petition to be signed. It has been signed, and is hard to change now. But Isaacs has been a GitHub forum from beginning.

Counter rationale: this has more stars, because it got more flashy Reddit coverage :-)

Finally, both will die soon when GitHub implements the promised public forum.

[crutchcorn]

@cirosantilli Might be nice to have a way to migrate everything over anyway. I can help take items and pop them into the public forum (automated obviously) when it goes public if needed

[aspiers]

I've submitted #295 as a partial fix for this. The other things needed for a full fix would be:

• the migration / merging mentioned above (ouch, this is quite a lot of work), and
• a PR auto-closer bot as mentioned in Disable pull requests while keeping issues for a repository isaacs/github#1191.

[aspiers]

See also #54 (Link to isaacs/github).

[axd1967]

A superficial comment: I'm beginning to wonder if this has become a positional war, where neither party is willing to give up.

A bit related to the many Facebook groups that pop up around common causes, but actually create islands that prevent a single, coordinated front.

Divide and reign, something like that: a nasty side effect of the contemporary social media?

[aspiers]

@axd1967 commented on 2 Aug 2018, 10:48 BST:

A superficial comment: I'm beginning to wonder if this has become a positional war, where neither party is willing to give up.

ICBW but I don't think that's what's happening.

At the time of writing:

• https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/ shows 186 open issues and 41 closed: a total of 227.
• https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/ shows 945 open, 305 closed: a total of 1250

It is hardly surprising that isaacs is more than 5 times bigger than dear-github, because:

• it was founded 3 years earlier, in 2013, and
• it was founded specifically for this purpose, whereas dear-github was only ever intended as a single petition to GitHub on a specific topic, and only accidentally became a repository for tracking other GitHub issues.

Bearing these in mind, I can't see how anyone could claim that it makes sense to retire isaacs and migrate those issues to dear-github. And in fact I haven't seen a single person suggest this. The only good reason I can think of for migrating this way round is that dear-github has a much better name, which alone I suspect is a big factor in why people are still using it.

OTOH, this issue #207 (and related PR) clearly shows several people calling for dear-github to be closed, and its issues migrated to isaacs. And noone has argued against that idea.

So why has nothing happened? My best guess is that the dear-github maintainer has simply given up on this repository, and is now totally ignoring it. So we're trapped in a fragmented stalemate, which is harmful to the community.

A bit related to the many Facebook groups that pop up around common causes, but actually create islands that prevent a single, coordinated front.

Divide and reign, something like that: a nasty side effect of the contemporary social media?

No I don't think that's applicable here at all; as explained above, there is no indication of wide disagreement on the next steps. It's simply that the only person with the GitHub permissions to fix it is not interested or maybe not even aware.

BTW: if a merge could happen, I really don't care much which repo would be the survivor. All I really care about is that the merge does happen and that the community fragmentation is fixed.

[oprogramador]

If the https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github maintainers do nothing, IMO we can do the following:

• migrate all the issues from https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github into https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues
• try to get more stars for https://github.com/isaacs/github

[cirosantilli]

Issue migration would be relatively easy (300 * 3 clicks or so) with the new issue migration feature: https://help.github.com/en/articles/transferring-an-issue-to-another-repository

Or even better: isaacs/github#1605

However I've tried and you cannot transfer across orgs / users it seems... so feature request: isaacs/github#1604

I wouldn't do anything to the issues here before that becomes possible.

[jayvdb]

There are lots of issues in the target repository which are the same as the ones here.

It wouldnt be helpful to create duplicates there.

We would need a list of issues here which are not present in the other repo, if any.

[markcellus]

https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues is read-only now. Can we close?

[aspiers]

Unfortunately GitHub decided to handle https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues in the worst possible way, just like I feared but hoped wouldn't happen.

So now we have literally thousands of issues and probably 100s of thousands of person-hours of collective wisdom about GitHub gathered over ~10 years which is now all locked in a read-only repository and partially duplicated not only in this repo but in the new(-ish) GitHub Discussions official forums. I hope the official forums provide an adequate outlet for community discussions going forwards and forever more, but if not we'll be back to square one of needing to rely on an unofficial outlet like this one.

[TPS]

My 2¢ as a former final-days collaborator (think 'moderator') @ isaacs/github:

partially duplicated not only in this repo but in the new(-ish) GitHub Discussions official forums. I hope the official forums provide an adequate outlet for community discussions going forwards and forever more, but if not we'll be back to square one of needing to rely on an unofficial outlet like this one.

For the record, the new official fora are @ https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/, & my cautious optimism in deprecating isaacs/github remains exactly @ the same level as @aspiers' since the official's day 1. There has been incremental, ever-more-glacial progress to the point that not only is a presence for many both here & there is necessary, but also (for some) in more factioned groups e.g., https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0, those w/ the concerns of code theft via AI use, the continuing ramifications 4½ years on of the slow absorption by Microsoft, &c.

TLDR: I believe not only that this repo, but this issue (w/ title modified to point to official GitHub discussions as the successor to isaacs/github) should stay open, & periodically reevaluated to determine whether our voices are effective as "just" users (as opposed to management in either corporation or stockholders thereof).