How about enabling the Discussions tab?

[aybe]

Discussed in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852

^{Originally posted by aybe September 16, 2022}

What you want

Maybe that could remove some pressure from the Issues tab?

That would enable a place for people who simply want to discuss and not have to open an issue about that.

Now of course, that a makes a second to place to manage...

It could be tried and always disabled if that turns out to be an inconclusive move.

Have you checked that no similar feature request(s) exist?

• I have searched and didn't find any similar feature request.

Code of Conduct & Contributing Guidelines

• I agree to follow the code of conduct and the contributing guidelines.

[aybe]

Sounds like a good idea to me. The issues list is full of "issues" marked as "question". If it's possible to move all of these to a discussions area, that would make it easier to find code issues to work on.

Originally posted by @Allofich in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

@joncampbell123

Can you enable the Discussions tab so we can give it a try?

Thank you.

Originally posted by @aybe in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

@joncampbell123

How about setting up a bot for closing stale issues?

https://github.com/marketplace/actions/close-stale-issues

Originally posted by @aybe in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

Automatically getting "stale" label after a set period may be OK. But I see only negatives if closing the stale issues after another period.

• currently you can order "by recent activity" which gives you the same effect - without moving non-actually-solved items to the "closed" category (which worsens the situation)
• many items are expected to remain open for long time - unanswered questions (which may be moved to discussions per above, although there is already a label "questions" with the same effect), feature requests that are "nice to have, but not immediate priority" (which are actually most of the feature requests), etc.
• getting questions moved to Discussion tab means you have one more place to search for topics

Instead I suggest to list here reasons for "open issues" to be polluted - and assign labels / milestones (as proxy of "priority"?) to those?

• discussion / question -> already has label, maybe move to discussion tab
• feature request -> already has label, also has "assignee" (e.g. if nobody is assigned, probably no progress can be expected soon), can be assigned to a "milestone" or to a few labels for "priority"
• open issue, where the next required action is for the OP/somebody else to provide further info (e.g. test a game with another setting, provide more details/context, etc.) -> e.g. "submitter input required"

Originally posted by @Torinde in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

How about setting up a bot for closing stale issues?

https://github.com/marketplace/actions/close-stale-issues

IIRC Jon stated that he will not set up a stale bot in the Discord server

Originally posted by @Dobby233Liu in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

Yes, I guess you're right, simplicity is the best in the end.

Originally posted by @aybe in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

• open issue, where the next required action is for the OP/somebody else to provide further info (e.g. test a game with another setting, provide more details/context, etc.) -> e.g. "submitter input required"

Adding such label - will that help? Or even that is not needed?

Originally posted by @Torinde in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

There are clearly too many labels, 61 exactly which half of them have been used less than 10 times.
7 of them are not used and could be deleted immediately.
Overall, only a handful of them are frequently used in the end.

There is https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/labels/help%20from%20user but it's been used only twice...
Tried appending some character to it to bring it on top of the list but that had no effect at all.

Clearly, these should be reduced, there will be losses in the process but for the sake of clarity.

Originally posted by @aybe in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

I propose the following:

Delete all labels with less than 10 issues, that will halve the list, there are 33 of them.

Consolidate these groups of topics:

https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/labels/suggestion (45)
feature request (280)
https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/labels/feature%20improvement (17)

topic: hardware (50)
topic: storage (52)

SDL1 (20)
SDL2 (23)

https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/labels/DOS%20gaming (75)
https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/labels/non-working%20game (18)

This will already give some fresh air to the section.

Originally posted by @aybe in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

• Suggestion / feature request / feature improvement - those can be combined, I assume
• DOS gaming / non-working game - maybe also OK to combine
• SDL1 vs SDL2 - those seem quite specific to me, merging will be a loss (e.g. you can't filter per SDL type anymore)
• Hardware vs Storage - for sure some of the topics labeled with "hardware" are storage-related, but they have both labels (same as having both hardware and audio, etc.)

Is there somewhere a documentation / legend / policy on the meaning and application of the labels?

Originally posted by @Torinde in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

Yes, going to look at some popular repositories to grab some ideas from them.

Is there somewhere a documentation / legend / policy on the meaning and application of the labels?

Not sure.

Originally posted by @aybe in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

Deleted these unused ones:

Deleted these with 1 issue:

Deleted these with 2 issues:

Deleted also:

Deleted these meaningless and/or too generic and/or rare ones:

Merged these:

Merged these:

Merged these:

I think that is enough for the time being, from 61 to 35 which is quite a change.

Turns out that making really generic labels was a terrible idea in the end.

The topic: hardware is rather hard to remove because it's catchall at the same time.

From what I've seen there should be something like topic: COM/LPT/modem.

In the end, I guess less is more when it comes to labels.

Originally posted by @aybe in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

Discussions tab open.

Originally posted by @joncampbell123 in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

Is it possible to move over existing issues to the discussions tab? Just looking at the current 1st page of issues, 11 of 25 issues have the "question" tag. It would certainly help thin out the number of open issues.

I would note, though, that some issues marked "question" are what I would consider as issues (i.e. reporting a problem, or at least something the reporter perceives as a problem), not questions. Such as #3819.

Originally posted by @Allofich in #3750 (comment)

[aybe]

This may be going to be more trouble than it's worth.

I converted this issue to a discussion, then I got this:

Basically, the issue is not moved, it is replicated to discussions, so that won't clean up some of the mess.

The issue still exists and shows a link to the discussion at the bottom.

And obviously, in case you were wondering, you cannot go the other way around.

All you can do is create another new issue from the discussion, lol.

---

Let's summarize:

• discussions create a second place, potentially making things even more confusing
• discussions cannot have assignees as shown in picture above, maybe problematic
• are people going to use that new place? it might be impossible to teach them to
• isn't 99.999% of stuff posted an issue in the end? the rest being gibberish or spam

Still, we should give it a try, let's see how things end up, say, next month.

Originally posted by @aybe in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4251009

[aybe]

Basically, the issue is not moved, it is replicated to discussions, so that won't clean up some of the mess.

Well, the issue gets marked "closed", so that's a form of "cleaning up", I think. Better than nothing, I suppose.

are people going to use that new place? it might be impossible to teach them to

I've had this thought as well.

Originally posted by @Allofich in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4251491

[aybe]

The thing is, if you are to search within closed issues, you will meet "this was converted to an issue".

You will then have to go to it to see and compare if that there has been any new stuff, confusing...

Let's give this thing some time and then we'll have a definitive answer on whether that was a good move or not.

Originally posted by @aybe in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4251533

[aybe]

Yes, at first sight it seems more trouble than gain... as you say - let's try and see.

Also, it seems when I mention another issue inside a discussion post - no link appears inside the issue, which I see as a disadvantage.

Originally posted by @Torinde in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4293401

[aybe]

So it's been roughly 6 weeks now that we've tried the discussions and personally I feel it ain't that good as it's more trouble than it's worth.

For instance,

Example 1:

I wanted to add this reply in the original issue (#3750) but since it has been converted to a discussion it's now been locked and impossible to unlock...

Example 2:

Someone opened the discussion #3862 as I've locked the original issue #3822, I unlocked it and referenced #3862 into it, but the "mentioned" mention is nowhere to be seen whether on the discussion or the issue itself; that really sucks.

Example 3:

That makes two places to manage, not very practical from any standpoint.

For instance, I've been checking on almost a daily basis and labelled pretty much any new issue but totally forgot discussions!

Example 4:

Askers literally never mark a discussion as answered so they all look as non-answered...

Example 5:

Whoever mentioned the fact that anything is potentially an issue turned out to be right, furthermore, that would simplify life for all if everything stayed in a single place.

Example 6:

If you look out at the many repositories out there, the discussions tabs is for most, anemic; i.e. it's more a toy than anything else.

---

I vote for closing the discussions the tab! Who else? 😅

Originally posted by @aybe in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4743410

[aybe]

I'm OK either way. From a user perspective, I don't see the discussions tab as trouble, and it is somewhat serving a purpose as a place for questions and discussions so that the issues tab can be focused on bugs and feature requests. I see two questions were created in it in the last week that, presumably, would have otherwise been in the issues tab. The effect is of course incomplete, with other questions still being created in the issue tab.

Personally, I think I would leave it, but if it is troublesome or unpleasant from a management perspective, maybe that outweighs the benefits.

Edit: Looking at the issues tab, there continues to be a "question" label for issues. If kept, it seems redundant with the discussions tab (perhaps it was intentionally kept during the discussions tab trial period).

Compared to the two new questions in the discussions tab in the last week, I see several question/discussion type new issues in the issues tab were created.

Unless there starts to be strict moderation of the issues tab (I suppose no one wants to do that), the discussions tab is perhaps a bit pointless.

Originally posted by @Allofich in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4743652

[aybe]

I'm for closing the Discussions tab - for the reasons above and some more

• Ideas apparently can't be answered at all: #3865
• having nested replies below each comment splits the conversation... although you may look at that at "focusing"

Still, what does "closing" mean? I would like if content is preserved - either moved to Issues or kept here without the possibility to write new topics and new comments.

Originally posted by @Torinde in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4744197

[aybe]

Allofich

You see the problem, if you don't force people to some direction, some will ask whatever in the first place they find, no matter if there's a more appropriate place. You then end up with topics that don't really belong to the place they've been asked in.

Looking at a new repository, the question label indeed does exists by default, it's just not very visible at all with that pale color; here, the colors have been changed so they 'pop' a little more.

I don't think there will ever be a strict moderation here, it's pretty relax and I see no reason why this would suddenly change over time.

Originally posted by @aybe in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4746698

[aybe]

Torinde

That's right, didn't even notice that the discussions tab features would change according how labelled a question has been...

Just tested creating an issue from a discussion, only the first post will be copied to the issue, not the others.

There are only 15 discussions thus far, losing these isn't really a big deal compared to the 2859 existing issues.

Originally posted by @aybe in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4746810

[aybe]

Since they are only 15 - I'm willing to help manually preserve those. Can you create issues from them (so as much as possible is transferred - and actually most anyway originated as issues - can the original issues be reopened? Then some of the posts will be present already) - and then we'll see how the rest of the posts can be copied? I think copy-pasting the text from "reference post in new issue" would carry over everything except the timestamp.

Originally posted by @Torinde in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4748156

[aybe]

Wait, can't you even create an issue? I mean, is that functionality disabled for you? Please let me know if it's the case.

In the mean time, I've tried converting a discussion to an issue and it shouldn't be that painful, basically:

• for the first post, click Create issue from discussion and click Submit new issue
  • this will import the first post
• for the next posts, in the dropdown, click Reference in new issue but don't click Create issue
  • copy the content in Body to the clipboard
  • paste it as a new post in the new issue, but remove the first four spaces else it will be a one-liner

See how it looks, I converted discussion https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3855 to issue #3949.

Originally posted by @aybe in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4748715

[aybe]

So, we're losing:

• the timestamps (but preserving the order, which should be sufficient),
• upvotes,
• emoticon reactions.
• edit history (for posts that were edited)
• Also authorship becomes obfuscated (in the bottom note inside the post, instead of the icon/username of the post).
• participant list - participants are mentioned as "originally posted by ...", but are not in the Issue list of participants. I don't know if they'll get notifications for new updates. Can @aybe/another admin add them somehow?

I can create, I was referring to discussions, which were issues in the past. I can't re-open the original issues - first list below.
I'll start creating for the "only in discussions" list. I'll update this post when I stop. done
When creating new issue - Title has to be manually copied from Discussion.
For nested replies groups - I kept replies from a sub-conversion in a single post.

CONTENT MOVED. @aybe to lock discussion

• Tandy PSSJ clone and TNDY ISA Tandy sound cards for non-Tandy machines
• Voodoo resolution
• Voodoo Banshee to provide DX6
• Trapping special keys while Dosbox-X runs
• (answered) Ignore microcode MSR by default
• Two questions
• Limiting data transfer speed on various interfaces to achieve a more balanced emulation
• Voodoo and CPU emulation performance
• Please help me with dosbox-x settings: scaler
• Can DOSBox-X help me with a port redirection?
• DOSBox-X nightly builds 3822 3862 [both are open now]

@aybe to be re-open Issue before copy-pasting:

• Road & Track: Need for Speed (SE or not) + M1 Mac 3856 3860
• Source code for scanres.com etc. 3854 3858
• Welcome to dosbox-x Discussions! [only opening post, move it to issue 3750 before the subsequent posts from 3852?]
• How about enabling the Discussions tab? 3750 3852 [this one, to be moved last, after 3851]

COMPLETED MOVE Discussion locked and moved to Issue

• A post (or similar) with troubleshooting tips 3949 3855

Originally posted by @Torinde in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4755871

[aybe]

What I can't do - adding labels. Can you grant me such right?

Originally posted by @Torinde in https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/discussions/3852#discussioncomment-4756425

[aybe]

@Torinde

Just moved up the remaining ones:

Road & Track: Need for Speed (SE or not) + M1 Mac #3857
Road & Track: Need for Speed (SE or not) + M1 Mac #3963

Source code for scanres.com etc. #3858
Source code for scanres.com etc. #3962

How about enabling the Discussions tab? #3852
How about enabling the Discussions tab? #3964

Welcome to dosbox-x Discussions! #3851 not really needed IMO

---

Interestingly,

Only the person who wrote the discussion or one with higher permissions can lock a discussion, I cannot.

Also, when an issue has been converted to a discussion, it's locked by github and you can only create a new one which is what I did.

[aybe]

@joncampbell123

Can you disable the discussions tab? 🤣

It turns out to be more trouble than it's really worth in the end, two places to manages and it's less flexible than issues...

We just "archived" the discussions back as issues so the history hasn't been lost.

[aybe]

@joncampbell123

Can you give the ability to users to label issues by themselves?

[Torinde]

@joncampbell123, I would like to be able to assign labels to mine issues, but also to others - if I see a mismatch/unlabeled one/etc.

@aybe, for the two topics which moved from original-Issue -> Discussion -> new-Issue - I tried mentioning the new issue in the original issue, but original is in special state "moved to discussion", so didn't get a pingback reference.
Maybe not crucial, but would be nice to have some "path forward" link from original-Issue to new-Issue (in case anybody wants to follow it) - if Discussion tab gets closed (and all Discussions get deleted/hidden ?), then links chain will be broken too.

[Torinde]

@Allofich @Dobby233Liu

[Torinde]

• participant list - participants are mentioned as "originally posted by ...", but are not in the Issue list of participants. I don't know if they'll get notifications for new updates. Can @aybe/another admin add them somehow?

I started pinging with @ the previous participants in each new-Issue, but in one I saw the original poster just having posted a comment, so I assume they got notified via the "originally posted by ..." mention.

[aybe]

Yes, alright. Thanks for your help! 😀

[Torinde]

@joncampbell123, I would like to be able to assign labels to mine issues, but also to others - if I see a mismatch/unlabeled one/etc.

I see there is a "Triage" access level which matches that:

[Torinde]

@joncampbell123, I got an email invitee, but link doesn't work?

[joncampbell123]

@joncampbell123, I got an email invitee, but link doesn't work?

Sorry about that. I'm not entirely sure how to fullfill your request unless that is to make you a collaborator on this project.