Activate Github Discussions

[rfezzani]

Description

@scikit-image/core, what about enabling the Discussions Github feature for the repository?

Issues labeled discussion, support or feature request may be converted to discussions, and the Github issues becomes more like a true bug tracker.

The community calendar issue #5169 may also take place there...

[grlee77]

I think that could be useful and would be in favor of trying it out. The only downside I see is some potential redundancy in purpose between discussions and the skimage Zulip chat. Perhaps Zulip is more suitable to a quick one-off question or initial query, whereas a more extended discussion that we want to be able to reference from other issues/PRs is suited to "discussions"?

[grlee77]

As a follow up, do others have examples of other repositories where the "Discussions" feature is being used effectively? I haven't really spent any time using it.

[rfezzani]

In GH Discussions doc you can find examples of repositories using it (ImageMagic for example)

[rfezzani]

BTW, I just realized that the Insights tab is somehow duplicate of the community calendar issue 😅

[alexdesiqueira]

The only downside I see is some potential redundancy in purpose between discussions and the skimage Zulip chat.

I'm in favor! 🙂 I think it would be nice to have everything centralized somewhere, actually.

[grlee77]

In GH Discussions doc you can find examples of repositories using it (ImageMagic for example)

Thanks. It looks like xarray is an example scientific python project using it

[stefanv]

I imagine @jni would also want to weigh in here.

An alternative is to use discussion.scientific-python.org and add a sub-category under contributor discussion. I would have suggested we move our user questions there as well, but we have had good interactions with the community at forum.image.sc.

[rfezzani]

I came with this suggestion because we have a lot of support and discussion issues!
Activating GH Discussions and converting these issues to discussions gives us a simple way to sort GH issues and make it more look like a bug tracker.
I don't see this feature as a replacement for Zulip or Image.sc, but more like an opportunity for a better issue triage.

[stefanv]

No objections from my side, @rfezzani, if discussions can be useful in separating out issues / questions.

[rfezzani]

OK, let us wait by the end of the week in case anyone has any objection. If no, I will activate Discussion and start issue triage next week 😉

[mkcor]

OK, let us wait by the end of the week in case anyone has any objection. If no, I will activate Discussion and start issue triage next week 😉

@rfezzani no objection on my part; thank you!

[rfezzani]

#5603 closes this issue 🎉

[grlee77]

Thanks for doing this and spending time to migrate existing issues!

Do you want to write to the mailing list and make a brief post in the general channel of https://skimage.zulipchat.com to increase awareness for non-maintainers? I think just briefly mentioning that we enabled the feature and what types of things should go which place.

My current understanding is that we would use issues for:
1.) bugs
2.) performance regressions
3.) broken documentation / web links

While Discussions will cover general discussions, planning/roadmap and feature requests. Image.sc will remain the best place for general usage questions.

[rfezzani]

Do you want to write to the mailing list and make a brief post in the general channel of https://skimage.zulipchat.com to increase awareness for non-maintainers? I think just briefly mentioning that we enabled the feature and what types of things should go which place.

That's a good idea 👍

My current understanding is that we would use issues for:
1.) bugs
2.) performance regressions
3.) broken documentation / web links

While Discussions will cover general discussions, planning/roadmap and feature requests.

Yes exactly 😉