Concluding discussions

[JonathanGregory]

Topic for discussion

I wonder how our GitHub discussions should be dealt with when they stop. Some of them will be aware of coming to a conclusion, and others will just go quiet (like issues), I suspect. Here are a couple of questions:

• Should we close them when they've stopped (for whatever reason) or leave them open? I think the only difference this makes is whether they appear in the default list. It's sorted by latest activity, so the inactive ones will gradually go down the list. With issues, there's a reason to close them, namely that the list of open ones compose our work agenda, but I don't think that argument applies as much to discussions.

• Should we label them, as we do with issues, e.g. as concluded or inconclusive, if they are conscious of having reached an end of some sort? We could also label them automatically as dormant if they have been quiet for some time without being explicitly concluded.

Best wishes

Jonathan

[DocOtak]

Repeating here a comment I made in another question:

Re what to do about this open discussion, I thought there was a way to mark an answer and "resolve" the discussion, but I don't see that option for me. perhaps you @ChrisBarker-NOAA as the question asker can do that? https://github.blog/changelog/2023-04-17-marking-a-threaded-comment-as-the-answer/

Marking something as the answer will pin it under the question in "green" so folks who find this question again can jump straight to the answer.

[DocOtak]

@JonathanGregory when setting discussion categories to allow things to be "marked as answer" it the category needs to change to "Question / Answer"

[JonathanGregory]

Thanks, @DocOtak. If you "mark as answer" does it close the question? I assume that anyone who opens a discussion can change its category subsequently (e.g. comment to question).

[DocOtak]

Looks like it adds a green checkbox next to the topic and pins the answer directly under the question, see https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi/discussions/categories/questions for some active Q/A style discussions. The "Discussion format" option is global for that category, I think it would be appropriate for our QA category.

[ChrisBarker-NOAA]

Hmm -- for #324 -- I only see "close" as an option, no "mark as answer" -- and the catagory is already "Q&A about using CF".

[DocOtak]

It's the "discussion format" option that would need to change (the radio buttons in my screenshot)

[ChrisBarker-NOAA]

Ahh -- so that's a global (to the Catagory) setting, not a per-topic setting.

So I'll let one of you change it if you see fit.

[JonathanGregory]

There are four types of Discussion format offered by GitHub: open-ended discussions, announcements, questions/answers, and polls. I created our three categories (announcements, comments and Q&A) all with the open-ended discussion format. This is the natural choice for comments. The sole difference between announcement format and open-ended discussion format is that discussions with the announcement format can be started only by a maintainer, not by anyone, and I didn't think we needed that restriction on our announcements. I didn't create a polls category because we've always decided things by consensus, not voting. We could introduce it of course if it were needed.

I guess that "Mark as answered" is supported by the questions/answers format. I didn't choose that format for our Q&A because it has the upvoting facility, like you see e.g. in stackexchange. I don't think our Q&A are like that. Generally there are few answers, and often a discussion is needed to arrive at the right answer. Maybe we should use the questions/answers format. What do you think? I tend to think that it's easier to keep the same format, and introduce a label instead to "Mark as answered". We're accustomed to using labels effectively, I would say.