[geofft]

It seems like some of these (perhaps all of them other than fixing the "+1" problem) can be done via API clients instead of via GitHub itself implementing it. A third-party website can do wiki searches. A separate service can send you email notifications, and you can turn off built-in emails.

Even the +1 thing might be solvable with a bot that edits each bug report to add a clickable +1 badge (a la the CI build-passing badges) at the top; all you need is to give the bot ownership of your repository. The badge can display the current +n count, and the service can give you a sorted list of open issues by +n. For bonus points, have the bot also harvest and remove comments that consist of just "+1" or ":+1".

This is GitHub after all; why don't we build stuff ourselves instead of waiting for a centralized closed-source company to decide they care about our features?

[allendoerfer]

>This is GitHub after all; why don't we build stuff ourselves instead of waiting for a centralized closed-source company to decide they care about our features?

Why would I build something for a centralized closed-source company?

[geofft]

Because then the only thing you're relying on the centralized closed-source company for is actual git hosting. This is a boring problem that dozens of other services solve well, and thousands of other services (like S3) solve poorly in a pinch. If you can migrate the interesting part of GitHub -- issue tracking, PRs, wikis, etc. -- to another provider, and GitHub just holds your data, then you're no longer locked in.

If you don't build it and you wait for the centralized closed-source company to, then you're putting your project even more in their hands.

[sytse]

You could build the features for GitLab. We'll roll them out on GitLab.com that you can use for free. We can import repo's and issues already and are working on PR's and wiki's.

[allendoerfer]

Migrating issue tracking and other stuff out of Github seems like a good idea if you want to reduce dependency, building a bot on top of Github issues - what you implied in your parent post - not so much.

[Nadya]

The +1 thing is solved by ZenHub - which I'm amazed they've been unable to gather a large amount of traction!

https://www.zenhub.io/

Not affiliated, used it, but without others using it it's largely...well.. useless. :)

E:

Hmm... seems it has become $5/mo to use. I remember it being free. Wonder when that happened?

E2:

>ZenHub is free for the open source community.

Oh.

[geofft]

ZenHub was the name I was trying to think of, thanks, but it seems like a thing everyone needs to opt into to make good use of (I think? in that it's a browser extension?). The idea I had is more along the lines of the CI badges, which don't require any action on the end-user's part. It's just an image inside a link, so it works in every browser already.

If ZenHub supports making its features available to OSS projects without needing every contributor to install the extension, that's much more compelling, and also totally not obvious from their website.

[Nadya]

>it seems like a thing everyone needs to opt into to make good use of

Yep! Which is why I gave up on trying to use it. I thought it would gain major traction given how useful it is - but I felt like the only person using it. So I eventually removed the extension.

>Not affiliated, used it, but without others using it it's largely...well.. useless. :)

[reustle]

Not only $5/mo, but $5/mo/user which is surprisingly expensive.

[wldcordeiro]

Chrome only too, which is super lame.

[masklinn]

ZenHub is a chrome-only browser extension, that sounds all kinds of terrible.