The Steemit.com GitHub repository is a very busy place! Developers are busy working on changes, and the community is very involved with discussing and reporting issues.
Many of the issues that are created are for the same types of things: support requests, enhancement suggestions, and bug reports. The dev team has to spend a lot of time reviewing these issues, and educating people on the correct way to get their issues addressed.
I looked into it, and found a way to create a set of "guidelines for contribution" that would let users know the proper way to use (and not use) the GitHub repository to address their issues.
Over the weekend, I submitted a pull-request to add guidelines to the Steemit.com repository, and this afternoon - the pull reqeust was approved! They now show up when entering an issue into GitHub :)
Here are the guidelines that will show up when users go to create issues:
Please Read
Please read these instructions before submitting issues to the Steemit.com GitHub repository. The issue tracker is for bugs and specific implementation discussion only. It should not be used for other purposes, as described below.
Bug Reports
If there is an existing feature that is not working correctly, or a glitch in the website that is impacting user behaviour - please open an issue to report variance. Include as much relevant information as you can, including screen shots and steps to reproduce the issue.
Technical Support and Login Issues
If you are having trouble using the website but it is not an error with the website (this includes login issues), do not open a GitHub issue. Please request help from the users in the steemit.chat help channel.
Enhancement Suggestions
Do not use the issue tracker to suggest enhancements or improvements to the platform. The best place for these discussions is on Steemit.com. If there is a well vetted idea that has the support of the community that you feel should be considered by the development team, please email it to [email protected] for review.
Implementation Discussion
The developers frequently open issues to discuss changes that are being worked on. This is to inform the community of the changes being worked on, and to get input from the community and other developers on the implementation.
Issues opened that devolve into lengthy discussion of minor site features will be closed or locked. The issue tracker is not a general purpose discussion forum.
This is not the place to make suggestions for product improvement (please see the Enhancement Suggestions section above for this). If you are not planning to work on the change yourself - do not open an issue for it.
Steemit.com vs. Steem Blockchain
This issue tracker is only intended to track issues for the Steemit.com website. If the issue is with the Steem blockchain, please open an issue in the Steem Repository.
Pull Requests
Anybody in the community is welcome and encouraged to submit pull requests with any desired changes to the platform!
Requests to make changes to steemit.com that include working, tested pull requests jump to the top of the queue. There is not a guarantee that all functionality submitted as a PR will be accepted and merged, however.
The Devs need a filter between them and the end users, usually this role is filled by a support team. I am working on some thoughts I have for a volunteer help desk.
What are your thoughts, if these ideas were flowing in a different route and filtered by type, number of cases, etc. Would it make life easier?
We are working towards making the #help channel of Steemit.chat the "go-to" place for users to get help. Right now the channel does not get much activity, but that will likely change.
There are not a lot of users that are responding to people there, so often questions go unanswered for several hours. If you could help keep an eye on that channel whenever you are available, that would be a huge help!
Interesting! I didn't know such a channel existed :)
Great! Thank you.
Great post!
I doesn't seem very organised though to leave feature improvements to roam on Steemit.com, there's a lot of duplicate ideas being talked about with authors unaware of each other. For example I saw this post a lot of ideas I've seen elsewhere.
It makes sense to have a ticket system for this like on bugs, but which is separate from the bugs so devs don't get distracted by them.
You can easily organise this with projects on GitHub, or even go as far as using something like ZenHub. The obvious drawback is that it make the normal "issues" tab appear messy.Or you can have a separate repo, though that's a bit of a hack.
Alternatively you can run a bespoke system for it. Maybe a new "official" Steem account which posts ideas for voting and discussion? Or a separate system, like Tutanota use to track feature requests, check it out here.
Great suggestions :) For now, Steemit is keeping track of what they plan to work on on their end.
A while back I worked on a community wishlist project. It was helpful to organize all the good ideas in one place.
https://steemit.com/steemit-ideas/@timcliff/the-steemit-wish-list-avatars-notifications-multi-language-support-and-more-oh-my-v2-0
Wow this is really great, awesome 😁
Excellent post sir @timcliff very good information, this will be of great help, I hope never to need it.
Reesteemit the post to contribute to the diffusion
Thanks @jlufer! :)
Fantastic!
We get these in the steemit/steem repo pretty regularly, too. Editing this one down to apply to that repo would be sweet, too!
Sure, will do.