I propose relocating most issue discussions from GitHub to !issue_tracker@lemm.ee to optimize developer time and foster increased user engagement and collaboration. This transition would allow developers to focus on critical tasks while leveraging the voting system on Lemmy to sort comments and identify the most valuable ideas. Moreover, Lemmy's nested comments feature would enable a more organized discussion than on GitHub, where comments can become difficult to follow. By reserving the GitHub issue tracker for concise summaries and effective problem-solving, we can enhance the development process and improve the overall user experience. This approach aligns with the preference expressed by developers to minimize interactions on issue trackers [^1]. Additionally, by reducing the flood of comments on GitHub, we can ensure that developers' time is not wasted and that they can efficiently address important issues.
I think this could be very valuable for the community and the Lemmy devs. However, I believe to be successful, there needs to be a volunteer(s) who “sync” the community to the GitHub issues. We could automate this but that would make the situation worse. Here’s how I could imagine this working:
When a new feature or bug is posted, the mod determines if this is duplicated or not. If so, they will reply to the post with a link to the previous post and lock the current one. If it is truly new, the community can vote and comment. After a week or so, if the community supports the new feature or fixing the bug, the mod will open a new GitHub issue with a summary of the community discussion and link to the discussion.
This is a lot of work for the mods, but I believe it would really add value for both the Lemmy community and the devs.