Templates for new issues

Infrastructure
1

Hi :slight_smile:

What do you think about making some kind of templates for new issues?

If you have a GitHub account, you can look at those set for Unicodify.

IMHO it would be useful to have at least one for Bug reports and one for Feature requests.

2

From my experience, 50% ignore them, 25% misunderstand them or do not understand what is requested anyway. The broader your user base, the less helpful I find them.

3

I would say that no matter if it’s useless for most of users, if it’s useful for 5% it’s good for them, and for the maintainer who will read them!

If a lot of users misunderstand templates, that means they should not be mandatory. That’s the case where they become a problem.

For example: in Unicodify, the one for Feature requests sets 4 titles:

  • Background
  • Proposed solution
  • Alternatives
  • Additional context

I find Background and Proposed solution useful, and probably I would have been better understood if I had used them.

I don’t use Alternatives and Additional context, because I don’t know how to use them in an efficient way. So I just remove them.
If someone wants to learn me how to use them, I’ll be happy to make better reports. :slight_smile:

4

@kaiw Do you have an opinion about that?

I see that Issues · Infrastructure / Infrastructure · GitLab has some templates, whereas Issues · GNOME / meld · GitLab has not.

5

I don’t have a strong view on issue templates, but broadly I agree with @jensgeorg and I feel that new issue templates probably annoy more people than they help.

Specifically with the linked issue, I think the problem is that it’s difficult to communicate a large new feature with a complicated new UI layout, and doubly so when there are no mockups or similar.

6

On Infrastructure you have the choice “no template”, and it’s the default.
So it lets you make templates, and they shouldn’t annoy anyone as long as you don’t require anyone to use them. :slight_smile:

Do you mean:

  • it’s useless to try to follow a template with titles and sections,
  • it would be much more useful to split this large new feature into multiple smaller new features?

If I’m right, I expected you to answer me, since I asked:

Do you think I should make 2 new issues and link them as child items?

(I guess I’m not allowed to make child items, only to see them, but maybe you’re allowed to make them after I’ve created issues for the multiple smaller new features?)

Sorry, I don’t know what’s a mock-up and how to do that.

If you agree, I prefer to spend time to help you coding Meld directly. :slight_smile:

7

Do you mean:
it’s useless to try to follow a template with titles and sections,

Yes, I think that’s not very useful.

it would be much more useful to split this large new feature into multiple smaller new features?

I mean that the new feature is not described well enough for me to understand what the proposal is.

Sorry, I don’t know what’s a mock-up and how to do that.

A mock-up in this case is a drawing or similar of the suggestion UI layout, without any actual functionality, but close enough to the desired outcome that someone else can visually understand the idea.