Convert Discussion into Issue

[agentpoyo]

Seems like one can convert an issue into a discussion but not vice versa. This would be a great feature I think, particularly if community members are providing ideas that could turn into Issues (Action Items).

[evi-liu]

Thanks for the suggestion! What context would you like to bring from Discussions into a converted issue?

[agentpoyo]

Perhaps an idea from the original topic starter would be used is what I'd imagine. Wouldn't need followup comments unless a comment has context within that would make it into the issue. It would be nice if you convert a discussion, you could select what comments you want to be transferred over so it's not cluttered (if there are a lot of comments).

[evi-liu]

Do you have any example Discussions that you wish you could create an issue from?

[gjaekel]

@evi-liu I may give one (also): igniterealtime/openfire-pade-plugin#234 . At this project we "opened" the discussion section a few days before. There a just a few entries yet, but at once there is such a candidate.

In my eyes this is a typical one for the use case where a vanilla user choose the wrong vehicle - the developer wish to handle most parts of this as an issue, because it's an individual problem. But there's also some meta discussion, that might be a candidate to leave as an discussion. But for the first sprint, a "full conversion" between the sections will be a big step forward and fulfill most needs.

[michael-hawker]

Here's another example of a submitted suggestion/idea, that we now then want to go work on and convert into an issue: CommunityToolkit/WindowsCommunityToolkit#3928

[WrichikBasu]

I second this suggestion. Some reasons why it might be necessary to port a discussion to an issue:

1. Someone mistakenly posts an issue (e.g. bug report) as a discussion.
2. Someone asks a question, and eventually it turns out that there is a bug. It would be great if I can also hide comments that are out of context/not relevant.

[behdad]

Would you prefer if the discussions was still kept there? Or would you want the discussion to be deleted once the issue has been opened?

My use-case is like @WrichikBasu.

Additionally, what context would you want to bring from the discussion to the issue?

Basically, member of community opens a Discussion item to ask why something doesn't work. We developers realize it's a bug and want to fix it. The original Discussion has all the data and discussion that belongs to an issue.

[bagder]

Some users are also very careful and want to be gentle. They rather start a discussion to ask about it rather than to downright claim it is an issue at start, while members of the project might recognize or consider it as an issue and therefore it should be treated as such and moved. Recent example in the curl project: curl/curl#6468

[Marcono1234]

Definitely delete the discussion once it has been converted to an issue.

But then it would really be necessary to copy over all comments (maybe with the optional feature to hide some of them, like you proposed).
Imagine this scenario: A user creates a discussion because they encountered an issue. You guide them through debugging steps and provide useful advice. It turns out they encountered a bug and you convert the discussion to an issue.
Then it would still be valuable to the user to have access to the debugging steps and advice you gave them in the discussion (e.g. when they are applicable to other scenarios as well), even though they are not relevant for the newly created issue.

[WrichikBasu]

@Marcono1234 Yes, all the comments should be copied into the issue.

[James-E-A]

I have a clear-cut example of this use-case: I posted a Discussion, then later discover it should have been filed as an Issue in the first place.

https://www.github.com/dependabot/dependabot-core/discussions/9345#discussioncomment-9214853

[asmeurer]

It's very common for users, especially new users to a software, to not realize that their "question" is actually a bug report because the behavior or error message they got isn't actually supposed to happen. Even experienced developers can be confused about what is or isn't intended behavior is a bug or a feature if they aren't experts in the code in question.

This can also happen in the other direction: a developer may incorrectly think an issue is a question and convert it to a discussion, only to later realize it is actually a bug.

[evi-liu]

Would you prefer if the discussions was still kept there? Or would you want the discussion to be deleted once the issue has been opened?

Additionally, what context would you want to bring from the discussion to the issue?

[tech2serve]

How about provide the option to transfer the topic completely, or split the two?

This may be better for a broader topic that results in multiple issues being generated.

[xetra11]

Need !!

[joshbruce]

See also: #2988

Found another seeming to ask for similar but that was before I learned cross-linking doesn’t work and this one appears to have more activity.

[philsward]

One thought is to have a "create issue" button and that new issue automatically creates a link to the discussion.

Part of me wants the full discussion in the issue, however the other part of me realizes that it may be way too much info to weed through and the issue itself might be a culmination of the thoughts within the discussion so having a fresh starting point might make the most sense.

@agentpoyo has a good idea worth considering.

[evi-liu]

What about if you were able to highlight select pieces of context from the discussion to include into the issue?

[philsward]

@evi-liu I think as long as it doesn't take a long time, it would be a good approach. Easy for short discussions, time consuming for long, so the "option" to choose context would be a good.

[xetra11]

That's a cool idea! Can't be that complex as a feature I'd assume!

[behdad]

We also want this. Example: harfbuzz/harfbuzz#2807

User opened discussion asking why something doesn't work. We want to fix it, so want to turn into issue.

[jay]

I would like to see this as well. Example:

curl/curl#6468

/cc @bagder

[wonderflow]

Hi, @evi-liu I'm coming here to the github feedback forum the first time just for this feature. It's very userful.

In my use case, the new coming users didn't realize their queston is a feature request or a bug. If we have decide to implement it, that's not in the scope of discussion anymore, it's just an issue.

I don't think we need to keep it in discussion if it has been coverted to an issue.

[michael-hawker]

We're thinking of using Discussions as an entry point for topics on our repo, and then leave Issues for specifically bugs or work that we've planned out into milestones/projects.

So if an idea that starts in Discussions becomes prevalent enough, has support, or a community member picks it up to work on, it'd be great to convert from a Discussion into an Issue and maintain that initial conversation as part of the history of the work.

[StjerneIdioten]

Exactly this. I am working on an addon for Blender, where I encourage people to post anything that might make their life easier in using it. I was hoping to use the discussion forum as a stepping stone for feature requests. So I could decide on what to work with next, depending on what people show the most interest in.

[jsmorabito]

echoing this. we use discussions as a staging area for bugs and feature requests to guage interest/support and to prevent our issues section from being overwhelmed since it is a place of action for our project. for reference i am coming from athens research which is an open source project https://github.com/athensresearch

[gjaekel]

1. Someone mistakenly posts an issue (e.g. bug report) as a discussion.

This is exactly the situation I faces since 30min ... :)

[fabratu]

This would be a great feature indeed. We are now using discussions on our project and especially the incorrectly created/converted discussions is a very realistic use case.

[PranamBhat]

There are 2 reasons why it might be necessary to convert a Discussion to an Issue:

1. Someone mistakenly posts an issue (e.g. bug report) as a discussion.
2. Someone asks a question, and eventually it turns out that there is a bug. It would be great if I can also hide comments that are out of context/not relevant.

This will be a very rare scenario. If this in case happens, We have a "Delete" option. So, delete the Discussion/Issue and post them once again accordingly.

[bronger]

Indeed, it is not a solution. I recently moved a discussion thread to the issues manually, marking who said what. This is sub-optimal, to say the least.

[lindeloev]

I second this suggestion. Example: lindeloev/mcp#109. The user asked about a solution to a problem. After a quick back-and-forth, it turns out that I would need to develop a new feature.

[rarkins]

You can. Ask support to enable it

[jsmorabito]

Can you elaborate? Is the ability to convert discussions back into issues already available?

[rarkins]

No, I was responding to someone who said issue -> discussion (not vice versa). It used to be available, then was removed due to a bug. I believe you can ask support to enable it for your org or repo specifically, unless it's back by default.

As far as I know we're all still waiting for discussion -> issue

[jsmorabito]

ah got it! yea i can do issue -> discussion. still waiting for reverse then!

[emiltin]

Yes. I'm reluctant to try Discussions and convert existing issues to discussions if I know it's a one-way operation.

[nrdxp]

We need a completely reversible operation or this isn't always great for what it's meant for since someone, at some time, will inevitably turn something that is better suited as an issue into a discussion, and the inability to turn it back will make anyone reluctant of moving to a discussion in the first place even though the distinction may better suit it.

A simple proposed implementation could be to simply lock the discussion and reopen the issue if it was previously converted into a discussion, while updating the issue with the discussions thread additions on reopen.

The current banner above converted issues seems sufficient to alert users that the discussion is locked and the issue reopened, in the same way it communicates the inverse now.

[erwincoumans]

I just converted all issues into discussions, by batch, assuming it was reversible. Hope it will be implemented.

[adityaruplaha]

I too support this, along with some way to "archive" a discussion so that it doesn't show up in View All.

[helmasaur]

Same here! First of all, it's interesting if someone makes a mistake. It quite confusing at the first sight to understand the different between the "Issue" and "Discussion" for someone familiar with GitHub, so imagine someone who just wants to give a feedback but who is not a developer.

Also, it would be interesting if an idea is validated, to convert it to an issue. I am not even sure it is possible to link a discussion to an issue or a commit.

[evi-liu]

Create issue from discussion Private Beta Available! 🚀

Hi folks, thanks for all of the helpful feedback on this! I'm happy to announce that we have a private beta available to enable creating an issue from a discussion. With this feature, you'll see a new button on your sidebar for Create issue from Discussion. See image below for what the experience will look like. Please note that this is just the first iteration. With your feedback, we'd love to know what else would be valuable in this experience. If you'd like to help us private beta test, please comment below with the repository you'd like to test on. Private beta is limited to the first 15 responders for now.

Click new Create issue from discussion button in the Discussions sidebar:

Takes you to an Issue draft with the linked Discussion and context of the post:

New issue created:

[ryandemopoulos]

Thanks for adding this capability @evi-liu! I tried using it just now and it worked, but it would be very helpful if there were an option for the new Issue to be filed under the original filer's account. I didn't see an option for this.

Example Use Case: if a user files a Discussion reporting a bug (that should have been an issue), I want to be able to convert the Discussion into an Issue but have that new Issue still list the original user as the one who opened it.

[nbouvrette]

https://github.com/Avansai/next-multilingual thanks

[gordsport]

Hey @evi-liu - how can we get access to Create issue form this discussion - this is something we would like in https://github.com/vegaprotocol/feedback/discussions

[artf]

@evi-liu is it possible to disable this feature? I have an issue form template enabled with blank_issues_enabled: false in the config.yml as I want to keep issues on my repo properly defined/described and this feature breaks the flow.

[timbomckay]

Has this feature been fully enabled or is it still in private beta? I see it in the documentation but our enterprise instance isn't showing this in our discussions.

[ouuan]

"Create issue from discussion" is useful for converting a feature request that was originally a Discussion to an Issue, but is not very useful if an Issue is mistakenly converted to a Discussion.

Maybe the currently converted Issues have already lost some information thus it's impossible to convert them back. What I would like is that in the future, when issues are converted to discussions, the old information can be preserved and the converting operation would be revertable.

To me, it's acceptable even if converting back is only available when there's no modification made after converting the issue to a discussion.

[wonderflow]

+1 after experience the feature, I found it is create issue from discussion not convert discussion into issue. \cc @evi-liu

[helmasaur]

What to important to he issue created in this case? Just the title with a link to the discussion? How to answer to something posed before the issue got created?

Or maybe you meant to create an issue with everything (like a clone) and locking the discussion?

I will be testing this functionnality tonight and tomorrow.

[bagder]

Note: this very repository has no 'issues' enabled and yet it allows us to create an issue out of a discussion? Maybe it shouldn't...

Snap:

[helmasaur]

Have you tried clicking on it to know what happens?

[bagder]

No... I don't want to risk any damage or chaos.

[evi-liu]

Thanks for reporting this bug! We're tracking it on our end and will get a fix out for it soon.

[wiredsister]

I just wanted to comment that I really liked the feature but this difference between issue & discussion was confusing for me. I for one, did not realize you could make existing issues into discussions and now have a duplication issue 😬

[helmasaur]

I am not sure I understood what you mean. Is it: issue to disscussion and then back to issue that would create a second issue instead of using the first one?

[wiredsister]

I had issues and I didn't know they could become discussions so I made a bunch of duplicated discussions by accident. That's what I mean.

[adityaruplaha]

Alternatively, I would appreciate the ability to close/archive discussions.

[ouuan]

Alternatively, I would appreciate the ability to close/archive discussions.

That's a different topic. See #3097.

[ivanperez-keera]

I also would like to be able to turn a discussion into an issue, in the same way that you can turn an issue into a discussion.

Is there a reason why it's not possible?

Creating an issue linked to a discussion is not the same, and it also requires additional clicks to gather context (now you have to go to the discussion and read it). Converting the discussion brings all context with it.

@evi-liu Can Github please implement the conversion?