Kaito Hanamori (previously Ben Evans) 5:30 am on September 27, 2023
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Looking for feedback: Updates to GitHub issue templates and labels

Summary: In an effort to streamline the team’s GitHub repo, the Next steps for GitHub updates project is looking to reduce the number of GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ issue templates in the repo from 9 to 5. The project is also looking for input as the current list of 119 labels is reassessed and reduced. Please leave your feedback on the proposed changes by October 17th (Tuesday).

Please review the new list of GitHub issue templates

In an effort to streamline the team’s GitHub repo, the Next steps for GitHub updates project has identified a need to reduce the number of GitHub issue templates. The expected benefits from this change include:

  • Less confusion for contributors creating new issues.
  • Less redundancy during topic vetting. (Currently, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) must vet the same topic for multiple content types.) 
  • Reduction in quantity and complexity of automations that will get set up.
  • Preparation for the consolidation of content types, as proposed in Looking for Feedback: Learn Website Information Architecture.

Below is a table listing the current 9 issue templates, and the 5 proposed templates they’ll correspond to. Each of the new templates have already been created and can be previewed from https://github.com/WordPress/Learn/issues/new/choose. (Scroll to the bottom of the list, and you’ll see these new templates prefaced with “_do-not-use_”.) Please leave any questions, suggestions, or other comments about these templates below.

Current issue templatesProposed issue templates
Bug Report Template
Content Feedback		Feedback
Topic IdeaContent Development (general)
Lesson Plan Template
Tutorial Template
Online Workshop Template
Course Template		Content Development (for Faculty)
Content Translation TemplateContent Translation
Meeting Agenda TemplateMeeting Agenda

Some points to note in these changes:

  • All feedback pertaining to Learn WordPress, regardless of whether it is regarding the website itself or the content, will be submitted in one issue. Automation similar to what the Docs team has will be set up, allowing any contributor (regardless of GitHub access) to triage and send these to their respective projects where they’ll be actioned on.
  • The current “Topic Idea” template will be renamed to clarify this is actually the issue content creators should use when creating content. These issues will be highlighted to SMEs to be prioritized in their topic vetting process.
  • Faculty who will immediately create content themselves may skip the vetting process. The four content templates the repo currently have are designed for this process, but weren’t labeled as such, and were therefore confusing general contributors. These will be consolidated into a single template marked “for faculty”. Automation similar to what the Docs team has will be set up, allowing Faculty to call the respective development checklist for their content type with a command.

Help us review the current list of GitHub labels

The project has exported the current list of GitHub labels into this Google Spreadsheet. We’re looking for Training Team contributors with experience in labeling issues in the team’s repo to help us document the purpose of each label.

Once completed, the project will:

  • Reassess labels based on their current use.
    • Similar labels may be consolidated.
    • Labels may be renamed for clarity.
    • Some project-specific labels may be replaced with custom fields.
  • Document the purpose of each label in the handbook.
    • Documentation will also include how new labels should be added and which labels are used in automation and, therefore, should not be modified.

Thank you for your feedback!

We’re looking for feedback on the proposed changes to issue templates and documentation regarding the repo’s current list of labels, by October 17th (Tuesday).

@webtechpooja and @jominney were co-authors of this post. Thanks also go to @yuli-yang for exporting the list of GitHub labels for the project!

#feedback, #github