24 ms·

Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments

736 points by WillAbides 11y ago

maaarghk 11y ago
- maaarghk 11y ago
  Looks like hacker news filters out emojis. My thumbs up pun has been ruined. In all seriousness - thank god. Hopefully it won't take Google Code issue tracker like levels of effort to get people to "please star the issue if it is important to you rather than commenting with +1".
  - trollingineer 11y ago
    Poor you.
SnaKeZ 11y ago
End of "+1" era?
knd775 11y ago
Well, I guess this at least sorta solves the "+1" issues.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
thejameskyle 11y ago
+1
cpr 11y ago
Nice to see them moving quickly on some major OSS community requests.
dpflan 11y ago
I like the idea of adding more expressiveness, pictorially capturing sometimes fleeting moments of emotion or accurately representing an emotional state that can occur. These are the following reactions: 1. +1 2. -1 3. smile 4. thinking_face 5. heart 6. tada Do they capture the necessary expressiveness for the context? Facebook's reactions cover more emotions, but FB is trying to support reaction to anything that can be posted.
- monsk 11y ago
  All I want is slack's :partyparrot: and I'm satisfied.
  - laughinghan 11y ago
    You may be interested to know that :partyparrot: is not built-into Slack, someone on your team had to add it: http://cultofthepartyparrot.com/ http://cultofthepartyparrot.com/ ...which I just did to my team's Slack.
- mayank 11y ago
  Considering that it's Github, how about things relevant to software engineering, like: agree, disagree, support, insightful, obsolete, misleading. I can't imagine it being helpful to know that someone felt "heart" about an issue comment.
  - xentronium 11y ago
    Heart is probably a supersized +1 for pull requests and a nod to Aaron Peterson.
    - dfc 11y ago
      who is aaron peterson? Googling that name results in a photographer,a lawyer and a bunch of doctors.
      - 11y ago
TomasEkeli 11y ago
Wow, Eric Elliott (@_ericelliott) just asked for this on twitter - and now it happened. He must be a witch.
richerlariviere 11y ago
I think it is definitely the end of +1 era, folks! Thanks Github to listen to the community feature requests. You should allow more icons like Slack is doing currently.
wilg 11y ago
Stoked about this feature! Can't wait until these are available in the API!
gsmethells 11y ago
Wow! GitHub is being influenced by GitLab (who released this feature recently in GitLab 8.4).
- ikanor 11y ago
  I am not surprised, the GitLab guys are doing a great job.
bengotow 11y ago
Finally. Let's just hope it doesn't email you when someone leave's a +1 reaction.
- lukevers 11y ago
  It'd be nice if you could configure this. It doesn't email you, but for some repositories it'd be nice if it did. It definitely solves the horrible problem of too many +1s everywhere, but there are times when getting those emails are helpful.
city41 11y ago
I think people will still write +1 comments because they won't notice this new feature, at least initially. It'd be nice if Github just converted "+1" comments into reactions.
- Nadya 11y ago
  If I reply with :+1: am I responding to the comment above me (in context) or to the original Issue? (Not that I do :+1: comments, but the above is a scenario where automatically converting wouldn't work.)
  - city41 11y ago
    Good point. Then maybe convert +1 comments into a popup showing reactions to the user. Or just wait for people to learn the feature over time.
    - bennyg 11y ago
      The latter option, for sure.
- dabernathy89 11y ago
  Now it will be more appropriate to shame people for doing it, though, and hopefully that will eventually lead to changed behavior.
bsimpson 11y ago
Looks like Dear GitHub[1] is having a rather quick impact on the product; first templates[2], now this: [1] https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github [2] https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull-request-templates https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull-request-template...
- braythwayt 11y ago
  Perhaps it follows the Hollywood model. There are lots of features in development, staff-shipped, in discussion, in the backlog, or whatever. Then there is some external stimulus (Facebook launched reactions!) and the feature gets quickly tailored and green-lighted. So there is a quick reaction, but work on the idea may have been hidden from the public for a long time.
  - x1024 11y ago
    That's a bit suspicious, really. A feature like "Reactions to a comment" doesn't take two years to implement, even with all the scaling considerations. And people have been complaining about that for at least two years.
  - shurcooL 11y ago
    Version 3.4.0 of Octicons [0] came out on January 22, 2016. It added "smiley" icon, which was used in this feature today. That's 8 days after the dear github letter. 7 weeks before today. [0] https://github.com/github/octicons/releases/tag/v3.4.0 https://github.com/github/octicons/releases/tag/v3.4.0
gjreda 11y ago
This is a welcome addition. I've run into bugs in projects before and wanted to "+1" a thread, but it always felt like spamming the maintainers. It'd be cool if they added a way to search through your list of reactions. This would allow you to effectively comment on an issue in an OS project, while simultaneously bookmarking it, so that you can go back and commit a fix when you have a free moment.
- siegecraft 11y ago
  In that scenario, I just subscribe to the issue, so at least I get notified if something changes. But of course there is no way to list the issues you're subscribing to.
SnaKeZ 11y ago
Could they convert the exiting "+1" comments into reaction?
- jstr 11y ago
  How would they know which comment to attribute them to?
  - aldanor 11y ago
    Something like ^\s*(:\+1:|\+\d+)\s*\!*\s*$ Even something as simple as this would clean up most of threads like these: https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/1084 https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/1084
trollingineer 11y ago
+1
rocky1138 11y ago
Emojis are terrible, but they're better than "+1".
dkopi 11y ago
The best way to +1 an issue is with a pull request.
Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
A missing feature here is sorting issues by public support. An example is FontAwesome, which explicitly asks users to leave a +1 comment on issues they support. You can then get a pretty good idea of the most desired features by sorting the issues by most commented. https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#requesting-new-icons https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/blob/master/CONT... https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Acomments-desc https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues?q=is%3Ais... Would also be nice to see these reactions on the issue list so you can get a feel for the issues at a glance without digging deep into each one.
- shoyer 11y ago
  Agreed -- this is the first thing I looked for. My guess is that this feature is probably next on their TODO list. There's not much point in sorting by +1s before there are many +1s accumulated, anyways.
fiatjaf 11y ago
GitHub: social coding
ma138 11y ago
Awesome move by GitHub. ZenHub[1] will be phasing out our +1 button now that it's no longer needed – feels good to focus. We're excited to use this reactions data as part of our reporting suite, please keep the improvements coming! [1] https://www.zenhub.io/ https://www.zenhub.io/
yuribit 11y ago
Is there a way to sort by "reactions"? Otherwise I think this feature is useless.. I would have preferred having more detailed issues rather than ugly Emojis.
jwilk 11y ago
Um. What does :+1: mean when applied to an issue? "I like this bug"?!
- npizzolato 11y ago
  Typically, I think it would mean "I would like this issue/request to be fixed/implemented."
- dcgoss 11y ago
  It's supposed to mean: "I agree" or "I have this bug too" or "Yes, this should be implemented"
- CM30 11y ago
  I think this bug is an awesome thing and shouldn't be fixed? Something like that would actually be surprisingly useful. But seriously, it likely means the person up voting the issue has also had the same problem and wants it fixed as quickly as possible.
- hk__2 11y ago
  “I have the same problem” or “I’m able to reproduce” maybe?
- imtringued 11y ago
  You want the contributers to focus on this issue.
mkobit 11y ago
I don't think these necessarily cover all of the responses that can be made, but I think it is a great start to getting simple feedback like this. Like other users mentioned, it would be awesome to be able to sort or perform some kind of action based on the quantify of the reactions. I wonder if they will allow for repository owners to select which reactions they will allow? I think that would help with the limited selection but still allow owners to select what they consider useful to them.
mrharrison 11y ago
-1 or the thumbs down reaction, I think is a mistake. They aren't usually that constructive, because most of the time they are used as retaliation against a specific user, instead of constructive criticism. If someone downvotes you, you tend to downvote them. At the least, it should be a privilege to down vote, like SO and HN do. http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-down http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-down
- joshmanders 11y ago
  Coincidentally you're being downvoted for stating this.
  - mrharrison 11y ago
    Yeah, I thought that was funny. Guess I wrote a horrible comment.
    - mrharrison 11y ago
      This comment is now getting downvoted. To be clear, so people stop downvoting this comment, this parent comment was initially downvoted to -1, it obviously isn't anymore.
- joepie91_ 11y ago
  I just want to elaborate on this a bit more: Implementing a downvote button is inviting baseless disagreement. It makes it socially acceptable to say that you disagree, without ever providing an argument or being expected to do so - this is precisely what you don't want, on what is supposed to be a constructive platform. This will (indirectly and directly) lead to populism, where unpopular opinions get dismissed out of hand without even considering them. Seriously, GitHub, this is rule one of designing constructive social platforms: you never ever ever implement a downvote button of any kind.
  - Lazare 11y ago
    > Seriously, GitHub, this is rule one of designing constructive social platforms: you never ever ever implement a downvote button of any kind. It seems ironic you'd post this on a platform that has a downvote button.
jkire 11y ago
I wonder if this is too featureful? What is the difference between +1, heart, and hooray? Having just a +1 and -1 is unambiguous and probably covers the vast amount of use cases? Perhaps not, but I'd be very interested to know the reasoning between being choosing between "unambiguous" and expressive.
- krock 11y ago
  I think I will use them this way: * '+1' to mean I like this feature or this issue affects me. * 'heart' to mean I agree with a proposed solution, or pull request. * 'hooray' when a solution is marked as fixed or a fix version has been posted for the issue. There are no rules though, so we'll see.
  - mattcantstop 11y ago
    Internally at GitHub over the past few weeks I have been using the heart reaction to express appreciation. For example, if someone is very helpful or empathetic I let them know I appreciate it with a heart.
- sergiotapia 11y ago
  It's just for fun, don't read too much into it.
- akie 11y ago
  Relatively sure they didn't follow as thorough a design process as Facebook did: https://medium.com/facebook-design/reactions-not-everything-in-life-is-likable-5c403de72a3f#.5p49fvc6g https://medium.com/facebook-design/reactions-not-everything-...
- zamalek 11y ago
  People have been using emoji comments to express not only reactions but also for voting. Even if you were to add voting features (which reaction emojis can be used for) you'd probably still get unbearable amounts of zero-value comments comprising of a single emoji, "+1" or gifs. This is probably an attempt to break that "user habit" by providing a tempting alternative to the type of person who spams comments in issues. Additionally, by using emojis for voting maintainers get slightly richer data about how users feel about something. A user story with 1000 thumbsups might fall lower in the backlog than a user story with 1000 hearts.
looneysquash 11y ago
I assume this is inspired by gitlab's similar feature?
hiphopyo 11y ago
Speaking about new features -- what I'd like to see is the ability to remove items from my public profile / activities list. Often I make mistakes. Often I do stuff I don't want the public to see, and I'd rather not have to email GitHub support asking them to remove them manually all the time.
lettergram 11y ago
Getting dangerously close to that Facebook patent[1]... [1] http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8918339.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8918339.html
choward 11y ago
Am I missing something or is there still no way to +1 issues? All I see are ways to react to comments. Whenever I feel the urge to "+1" something it's for the issue, not a specific comment. Can someone explain how to add a reaction to an issue?
- dcre 11y ago
  You are missing something :) e.g., top right corner on https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/6239 https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/6239
  - choward 11y ago
    I still only see it for the comment and not the issue itself.
    - developer2 11y ago
      This is due to inconsistency from Github on the labeling of the issue text. That issue has no comments - the header shows "lostthetrail opened this issue 7 hours ago · 0 comments". The first "comment" you see is meant to be the original issue text, not a comment. And yet... the header for that text says "lostthetrail commented 7 hours ago". Github repurposed the commenting system to stand in for the issue text itself. Side effect of a lazy implementation. tldr; The first "comment" isn't a comment. It's the issue itself, and is where you add your reaction for the issue.
      - choward 11y ago
        That makes a little more since. Pretty lame though. For example, I don't wouldn't want to upvote the top comment here: https://github.com/rolaveric/karma-systemjs/issues/35 https://github.com/rolaveric/karma-systemjs/issues/35
Animats 11y ago
I'd keep downvotes, but lose the emoji.
Mikushi 11y ago
April 1st is not there yet. I get the idea, but seriously, emojis...
- yxe 11y ago
  Yeah I panicked and checked my calendar
chrismonsanto 11y ago
Can you downvote replies in threads that are locked? Can collaborators delete these reactions like we would with comments? > Have feedback on this post? Let know on Twitter. Not everyone uses Twitter. It would be awesome to give feedback using the one account I'm guaranteed to have: a GitHub account. Otherwise I have to ask my question on HN...
donretag 11y ago
"So go ahead…:+1: or :tada: to your :heart:s content." Or please don't. Part of the problem with the +1s is that they add noise. How are reactions going to cut down on the noise? Telling people to go ahead a +1 an issue (increase noise) is the opposite of what the "Dear Github" maintainers want. Many projects do not use +1 or any other voting scheme to illicit priority from the general public. +1 comments and reactions provide little value. I have seen Github issues where people +1 already closed issues because they do not bother reading.
- WillAbides 11y ago
  One more reaction just iterates a number next to an emoji. It doesn't add a comment and nobody gets a notification.
- roblabla 11y ago
  It reduces noise because a reaction is not a reply: it doesn't notify the issue author of a response and takes a lot less space visually, letting discussions about an issue take place without being intermixed with a bunch of :+1:. Reactions let you know the impact an issue may be having. I suppose it may not be good for every project, but dismissing it as "providing little value" seems a bit too much considering it was among the most often asked features by maintainers...
mrmondo 11y ago
Ah yes, following in the steps of Gitlab which has had this for a while, the thumbs up / down and voting types are useful, everything is a distraction IMO
- sytse 11y ago
  GitLab had emoji on issues/MR's but not emoji's on comments, we're working on that for 8.7 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/3655 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/3655
ruffrey 11y ago
Why is the thumbs up a white hand, and thumbs down is a yellow hand?!
- WillAbides 11y ago
  It's a social commentary
- a_bonobo 11y ago
  They are both yellow for me on Fedora 22, one is just a flipped version of the other
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
voaie 11y ago
Well, I think a voting pool is more practical than manually counting upvote/downvote of every comment. I don't know how often the maintainers will come back and see how an issue is going and see which comments are popular. Also, sorting comments is not fun because of duplicated contents.
bhaumik 11y ago
First* Slack, then Facebook, and now GitHub. Looks like reactions are replacing (or expanding on..) the unary like/upvote/heart expression for tech products. *Or at least the first time I've seen them used as an important feature.
- ben336 11y ago
  I think Path was the first to do this: https://path.com/ https://path.com/
franciscop 11y ago
Awesome! Just a niptick, I think the reaction action should be near where the interface is. So either change the icon to make a reaction to bottom left, or change where it's shown to the right (where milestone, tags, etc are). This way you get better feedback.
southpolesteve 11y ago
This makes me think Github doesn't get it. Emoji comments are often used because there is no better way to interact with an issue/PR. What we need are better issue management tools. Polls, voting, triage tools, etc. Instead we got an easier way to post emojis. Feels more like a "look we have reactions like slack!!!" gimmick rather than a properly designed response to user requests for features.
purpleidea 11y ago
Ironically, you can't respond with a :reaction: to their "reactions" post.
dj_doh 11y ago
-1 or thumbs down reaction should be avoided.
auscompgeek 11y ago
Kinda makes you wish you could :+1: the blog post.
zuxfer 11y ago
also, it would be good to convert any comment or message with just +1 as reactions. cleans up the existing issue threads.
supernintendo 11y ago
That's cool. But what I'd really like is the ability to star comments so I can revisit them later.
- roryokane 11y ago
  As a substitute, you can click on a comment’s timestamp and then bookmark the current URL, which will be a permalink to that comment.
silverwind 11y ago
The implementation feels a bit rushed. Here are my suggestions: - Don't allow a user to rate his own posts. - Don't allow a user to issue contradicting votes like +1 and -1 at the same time. - Use image emoji like everywhere else on the site for compatibilty.
jmspring 11y ago
I find the idea of adding social responses to github distasteful. It's my own opinion. That said, it'd be interesting to see a breakdown by age and background in terms of supporting or not supporting this addition.
jorgecurio 11y ago
I can just imagine this being abused by less socially aware on the autism spectrum disorder, I definitely think it's wrong and toxic to add mechanisms which support non constructive criticisms or praise that leads to emoticon circle jerks.
PeterStuer 11y ago
Interesting cultural bias. Why are people not questioning unsubstantiated up-votes, but feel down-voters shouldn't be let of the hook without a full argumentation?
- esailija 11y ago
  Upvote is already backed by the arguments the upvoted post contains. Downvote is not backed by those arguments. They are not symmetrical at all and there is no bias.
  - PeterStuer 11y ago
    That is only true if the upvoted post contained an argumentation and not just a statement or an observation.
Illniyar 11y ago
While I applaud finally adding the vote up (and even vote down) features, this feature look a bit overdesigned. I don't really get how I should "love" an issue, or "this issue makes me happy". Or the relevance of a "thinking face". The ui would be simpler with only 1 or 2 icons. At least there's no "this issue makes me sad/angry" buttons.
- x1024 11y ago
  "Facebook does this way, so we do it this way."
peterwaller 11y ago
My emojis look weird and not in keeping with the style of emojis elsewhere on the site http://imgur.com/rB9BdEr http://imgur.com/rB9BdEr
jbrooksuk 11y ago
A step in the right direction, nice! One thing I don't like is that you're able to add multiple reactions to the same item, it sends mixed signals.
bigethan 11y ago
It'd be nice if they added a little warning whenever submitting a comment that was only a '+1' or '-1' otherwise the discoverability is gonna take a while, maybe? Also a option to convert those comments into reactions for repository owners.
nmstoker 11y ago
My apologies if i missed a comment, but I'm surprised how few people support "giving it a go" and then deciding if it's good or bad. There's a multitude of user approaches, lots of people very touchy about their way of doing things (some extra so as this relates to their profession) Whilst not wishing to appear a fanboy, clearly Github have put a decent amount of thought into this, they've got a fairly good track record and they're responsive. If it's poor, they'll reassess it.
edelans 11y ago
Funny how I wanted to +1 this blog post =)
vaibhavkul 11y ago
How about a stop (hand palm) [1] instead of -1? [1] http://emojipedia.org/raised-hand/ http://emojipedia.org/raised-hand/
odbol_ 11y ago
The great thing about adding emoji Reactions to all our social media posts is that now AIs can finally learn human emotion. I'm sure Google is already training theirs on how different keywords make people feel.

736 points by WillAbides 11y ago

maaarghk 11y ago

maaarghk 11y ago
Looks like hacker news filters out emojis. My thumbs up pun has been ruined. In all seriousness - thank god. Hopefully it won't take Google Code issue tracker like levels of effort to get people to "please star the issue if it is important to you rather than commenting with +1".
- trollingineer 11y ago
  Poor you.

SnaKeZ 11y ago

End of "+1" era?

knd775 11y ago

Well, I guess this at least sorta solves the "+1" issues.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

thejameskyle 11y ago

cpr 11y ago

Nice to see them moving quickly on some major OSS community requests.

dpflan 11y ago

I like the idea of adding more expressiveness, pictorially capturing sometimes fleeting moments of emotion or accurately representing an emotional state that can occur. These are the following reactions: 1. +1 2. -1 3. smile 4. thinking_face 5. heart 6. tada Do they capture the necessary expressiveness for the context? Facebook's reactions cover more emotions, but FB is trying to support reaction to anything that can be posted.

monsk 11y ago
All I want is slack's :partyparrot: and I'm satisfied.
- laughinghan 11y ago
  You may be interested to know that :partyparrot: is not built-into Slack, someone on your team had to add it: http://cultofthepartyparrot.com/ http://cultofthepartyparrot.com/ ...which I just did to my team's Slack.
mayank 11y ago
Considering that it's Github, how about things relevant to software engineering, like: agree, disagree, support, insightful, obsolete, misleading. I can't imagine it being helpful to know that someone felt "heart" about an issue comment.
- xentronium 11y ago
  Heart is probably a supersized +1 for pull requests and a nod to Aaron Peterson.
  - dfc 11y ago
    who is aaron peterson? Googling that name results in a photographer,a lawyer and a bunch of doctors.
    - 11y ago

TomasEkeli 11y ago

Wow, Eric Elliott (@_ericelliott) just asked for this on twitter - and now it happened. He must be a witch.

richerlariviere 11y ago

I think it is definitely the end of +1 era, folks! Thanks Github to listen to the community feature requests. You should allow more icons like Slack is doing currently.

wilg 11y ago

Stoked about this feature! Can't wait until these are available in the API!

gsmethells 11y ago

Wow! GitHub is being influenced by GitLab (who released this feature recently in GitLab 8.4).

ikanor 11y ago
I am not surprised, the GitLab guys are doing a great job.

bengotow 11y ago

Finally. Let's just hope it doesn't email you when someone leave's a +1 reaction.

lukevers 11y ago
It'd be nice if you could configure this. It doesn't email you, but for some repositories it'd be nice if it did. It definitely solves the horrible problem of too many +1s everywhere, but there are times when getting those emails are helpful.

city41 11y ago

I think people will still write +1 comments because they won't notice this new feature, at least initially. It'd be nice if Github just converted "+1" comments into reactions.

Nadya 11y ago
If I reply with :+1: am I responding to the comment above me (in context) or to the original Issue? (Not that I do :+1: comments, but the above is a scenario where automatically converting wouldn't work.)
- city41 11y ago
  Good point. Then maybe convert +1 comments into a popup showing reactions to the user. Or just wait for people to learn the feature over time.
  - bennyg 11y ago
    The latter option, for sure.
dabernathy89 11y ago
Now it will be more appropriate to shame people for doing it, though, and hopefully that will eventually lead to changed behavior.

bsimpson 11y ago

Looks like Dear GitHub[1] is having a rather quick impact on the product; first templates[2], now this: [1] https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github [2] https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull-request-templates https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull-request-template...

braythwayt 11y ago
Perhaps it follows the Hollywood model. There are lots of features in development, staff-shipped, in discussion, in the backlog, or whatever. Then there is some external stimulus (Facebook launched reactions!) and the feature gets quickly tailored and green-lighted. So there is a quick reaction, but work on the idea may have been hidden from the public for a long time.
- x1024 11y ago
  That's a bit suspicious, really. A feature like "Reactions to a comment" doesn't take two years to implement, even with all the scaling considerations. And people have been complaining about that for at least two years.
- shurcooL 11y ago
  Version 3.4.0 of Octicons [0] came out on January 22, 2016. It added "smiley" icon, which was used in this feature today. That's 8 days after the dear github letter. 7 weeks before today. [0] https://github.com/github/octicons/releases/tag/v3.4.0 https://github.com/github/octicons/releases/tag/v3.4.0

gjreda 11y ago

This is a welcome addition. I've run into bugs in projects before and wanted to "+1" a thread, but it always felt like spamming the maintainers. It'd be cool if they added a way to search through your list of reactions. This would allow you to effectively comment on an issue in an OS project, while simultaneously bookmarking it, so that you can go back and commit a fix when you have a free moment.

siegecraft 11y ago
In that scenario, I just subscribe to the issue, so at least I get notified if something changes. But of course there is no way to list the issues you're subscribing to.

SnaKeZ 11y ago

Could they convert the exiting "+1" comments into reaction?

jstr 11y ago
How would they know which comment to attribute them to?
- aldanor 11y ago
  Something like ^\s*(:\+1:|\+\d+)\s*\!*\s*$ Even something as simple as this would clean up most of threads like these: https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/1084 https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/1084

trollingineer 11y ago

rocky1138 11y ago

Emojis are terrible, but they're better than "+1".

dkopi 11y ago

The best way to +1 an issue is with a pull request.

Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago

A missing feature here is sorting issues by public support. An example is FontAwesome, which explicitly asks users to leave a +1 comment on issues they support. You can then get a pretty good idea of the most desired features by sorting the issues by most commented. https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#requesting-new-icons https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/blob/master/CONT... https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Acomments-desc https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues?q=is%3Ais... Would also be nice to see these reactions on the issue list so you can get a feel for the issues at a glance without digging deep into each one.

shoyer 11y ago
Agreed -- this is the first thing I looked for. My guess is that this feature is probably next on their TODO list. There's not much point in sorting by +1s before there are many +1s accumulated, anyways.

fiatjaf 11y ago

GitHub: social coding

ma138 11y ago

Awesome move by GitHub. ZenHub[1] will be phasing out our +1 button now that it's no longer needed – feels good to focus. We're excited to use this reactions data as part of our reporting suite, please keep the improvements coming! [1] https://www.zenhub.io/ https://www.zenhub.io/

yuribit 11y ago

Is there a way to sort by "reactions"? Otherwise I think this feature is useless.. I would have preferred having more detailed issues rather than ugly Emojis.

jwilk 11y ago

Um. What does :+1: mean when applied to an issue? "I like this bug"?!

npizzolato 11y ago
Typically, I think it would mean "I would like this issue/request to be fixed/implemented."
dcgoss 11y ago
It's supposed to mean: "I agree" or "I have this bug too" or "Yes, this should be implemented"
CM30 11y ago
I think this bug is an awesome thing and shouldn't be fixed? Something like that would actually be surprisingly useful. But seriously, it likely means the person up voting the issue has also had the same problem and wants it fixed as quickly as possible.
hk__2 11y ago
“I have the same problem” or “I’m able to reproduce” maybe?
imtringued 11y ago
You want the contributers to focus on this issue.

mkobit 11y ago

I don't think these necessarily cover all of the responses that can be made, but I think it is a great start to getting simple feedback like this. Like other users mentioned, it would be awesome to be able to sort or perform some kind of action based on the quantify of the reactions. I wonder if they will allow for repository owners to select which reactions they will allow? I think that would help with the limited selection but still allow owners to select what they consider useful to them.

mrharrison 11y ago

-1 or the thumbs down reaction, I think is a mistake. They aren't usually that constructive, because most of the time they are used as retaliation against a specific user, instead of constructive criticism. If someone downvotes you, you tend to downvote them. At the least, it should be a privilege to down vote, like SO and HN do. http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-down http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-down

joshmanders 11y ago
Coincidentally you're being downvoted for stating this.
- mrharrison 11y ago
  Yeah, I thought that was funny. Guess I wrote a horrible comment.
  - mrharrison 11y ago
    This comment is now getting downvoted. To be clear, so people stop downvoting this comment, this parent comment was initially downvoted to -1, it obviously isn't anymore.
joepie91_ 11y ago
I just want to elaborate on this a bit more: Implementing a downvote button is inviting baseless disagreement. It makes it socially acceptable to say that you disagree, without ever providing an argument or being expected to do so - this is precisely what you don't want, on what is supposed to be a constructive platform. This will (indirectly and directly) lead to populism, where unpopular opinions get dismissed out of hand without even considering them. Seriously, GitHub, this is rule one of designing constructive social platforms: you never ever ever implement a downvote button of any kind.
- Lazare 11y ago
  > Seriously, GitHub, this is rule one of designing constructive social platforms: you never ever ever implement a downvote button of any kind. It seems ironic you'd post this on a platform that has a downvote button.

jkire 11y ago

I wonder if this is too featureful? What is the difference between +1, heart, and hooray? Having just a +1 and -1 is unambiguous and probably covers the vast amount of use cases? Perhaps not, but I'd be very interested to know the reasoning between being choosing between "unambiguous" and expressive.

krock 11y ago
I think I will use them this way: * '+1' to mean I like this feature or this issue affects me. * 'heart' to mean I agree with a proposed solution, or pull request. * 'hooray' when a solution is marked as fixed or a fix version has been posted for the issue. There are no rules though, so we'll see.
- mattcantstop 11y ago
  Internally at GitHub over the past few weeks I have been using the heart reaction to express appreciation. For example, if someone is very helpful or empathetic I let them know I appreciate it with a heart.
sergiotapia 11y ago
It's just for fun, don't read too much into it.
akie 11y ago
Relatively sure they didn't follow as thorough a design process as Facebook did: https://medium.com/facebook-design/reactions-not-everything-in-life-is-likable-5c403de72a3f#.5p49fvc6g https://medium.com/facebook-design/reactions-not-everything-...
zamalek 11y ago
People have been using emoji comments to express not only reactions but also for voting. Even if you were to add voting features (which reaction emojis can be used for) you'd probably still get unbearable amounts of zero-value comments comprising of a single emoji, "+1" or gifs. This is probably an attempt to break that "user habit" by providing a tempting alternative to the type of person who spams comments in issues. Additionally, by using emojis for voting maintainers get slightly richer data about how users feel about something. A user story with 1000 thumbsups might fall lower in the backlog than a user story with 1000 hearts.

looneysquash 11y ago

I assume this is inspired by gitlab's similar feature?

hiphopyo 11y ago

Speaking about new features -- what I'd like to see is the ability to remove items from my public profile / activities list. Often I make mistakes. Often I do stuff I don't want the public to see, and I'd rather not have to email GitHub support asking them to remove them manually all the time.

lettergram 11y ago

Getting dangerously close to that Facebook patent[1]... [1] http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8918339.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8918339.html

choward 11y ago

Am I missing something or is there still no way to +1 issues? All I see are ways to react to comments. Whenever I feel the urge to "+1" something it's for the issue, not a specific comment. Can someone explain how to add a reaction to an issue?

dcre 11y ago
You are missing something :) e.g., top right corner on https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/6239 https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/6239
- choward 11y ago
  I still only see it for the comment and not the issue itself.
  - developer2 11y ago
    This is due to inconsistency from Github on the labeling of the issue text. That issue has no comments - the header shows "lostthetrail opened this issue 7 hours ago · 0 comments". The first "comment" you see is meant to be the original issue text, not a comment. And yet... the header for that text says "lostthetrail commented 7 hours ago". Github repurposed the commenting system to stand in for the issue text itself. Side effect of a lazy implementation. tldr; The first "comment" isn't a comment. It's the issue itself, and is where you add your reaction for the issue.
    - choward 11y ago
      That makes a little more since. Pretty lame though. For example, I don't wouldn't want to upvote the top comment here: https://github.com/rolaveric/karma-systemjs/issues/35 https://github.com/rolaveric/karma-systemjs/issues/35

Animats 11y ago

I'd keep downvotes, but lose the emoji.

Mikushi 11y ago

April 1st is not there yet. I get the idea, but seriously, emojis...

yxe 11y ago
Yeah I panicked and checked my calendar

chrismonsanto 11y ago

Can you downvote replies in threads that are locked? Can collaborators delete these reactions like we would with comments? > Have feedback on this post? Let know on Twitter. Not everyone uses Twitter. It would be awesome to give feedback using the one account I'm guaranteed to have: a GitHub account. Otherwise I have to ask my question on HN...

donretag 11y ago

"So go ahead…:+1: or :tada: to your :heart:s content." Or please don't. Part of the problem with the +1s is that they add noise. How are reactions going to cut down on the noise? Telling people to go ahead a +1 an issue (increase noise) is the opposite of what the "Dear Github" maintainers want. Many projects do not use +1 or any other voting scheme to illicit priority from the general public. +1 comments and reactions provide little value. I have seen Github issues where people +1 already closed issues because they do not bother reading.

WillAbides 11y ago
One more reaction just iterates a number next to an emoji. It doesn't add a comment and nobody gets a notification.
roblabla 11y ago
It reduces noise because a reaction is not a reply: it doesn't notify the issue author of a response and takes a lot less space visually, letting discussions about an issue take place without being intermixed with a bunch of :+1:. Reactions let you know the impact an issue may be having. I suppose it may not be good for every project, but dismissing it as "providing little value" seems a bit too much considering it was among the most often asked features by maintainers...

mrmondo 11y ago

Ah yes, following in the steps of Gitlab which has had this for a while, the thumbs up / down and voting types are useful, everything is a distraction IMO

sytse 11y ago
GitLab had emoji on issues/MR's but not emoji's on comments, we're working on that for 8.7 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/3655 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/3655

ruffrey 11y ago

Why is the thumbs up a white hand, and thumbs down is a yellow hand?!

WillAbides 11y ago
It's a social commentary
a_bonobo 11y ago
They are both yellow for me on Fedora 22, one is just a flipped version of the other

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

voaie 11y ago

Well, I think a voting pool is more practical than manually counting upvote/downvote of every comment. I don't know how often the maintainers will come back and see how an issue is going and see which comments are popular. Also, sorting comments is not fun because of duplicated contents.

bhaumik 11y ago

First* Slack, then Facebook, and now GitHub. Looks like reactions are replacing (or expanding on..) the unary like/upvote/heart expression for tech products. *Or at least the first time I've seen them used as an important feature.

ben336 11y ago
I think Path was the first to do this: https://path.com/ https://path.com/

franciscop 11y ago

Awesome! Just a niptick, I think the reaction action should be near where the interface is. So either change the icon to make a reaction to bottom left, or change where it's shown to the right (where milestone, tags, etc are). This way you get better feedback.

southpolesteve 11y ago

This makes me think Github doesn't get it. Emoji comments are often used because there is no better way to interact with an issue/PR. What we need are better issue management tools. Polls, voting, triage tools, etc. Instead we got an easier way to post emojis. Feels more like a "look we have reactions like slack!!!" gimmick rather than a properly designed response to user requests for features.

purpleidea 11y ago

Ironically, you can't respond with a :reaction: to their "reactions" post.

dj_doh 11y ago

-1 or thumbs down reaction should be avoided.

auscompgeek 11y ago

Kinda makes you wish you could :+1: the blog post.

zuxfer 11y ago

also, it would be good to convert any comment or message with just +1 as reactions. cleans up the existing issue threads.

supernintendo 11y ago

That's cool. But what I'd really like is the ability to star comments so I can revisit them later.

roryokane 11y ago
As a substitute, you can click on a comment’s timestamp and then bookmark the current URL, which will be a permalink to that comment.

silverwind 11y ago

The implementation feels a bit rushed. Here are my suggestions: - Don't allow a user to rate his own posts. - Don't allow a user to issue contradicting votes like +1 and -1 at the same time. - Use image emoji like everywhere else on the site for compatibilty.

jmspring 11y ago

I find the idea of adding social responses to github distasteful. It's my own opinion. That said, it'd be interesting to see a breakdown by age and background in terms of supporting or not supporting this addition.

jorgecurio 11y ago

I can just imagine this being abused by less socially aware on the autism spectrum disorder, I definitely think it's wrong and toxic to add mechanisms which support non constructive criticisms or praise that leads to emoticon circle jerks.

PeterStuer 11y ago

Interesting cultural bias. Why are people not questioning unsubstantiated up-votes, but feel down-voters shouldn't be let of the hook without a full argumentation?

esailija 11y ago
Upvote is already backed by the arguments the upvoted post contains. Downvote is not backed by those arguments. They are not symmetrical at all and there is no bias.
- PeterStuer 11y ago
  That is only true if the upvoted post contained an argumentation and not just a statement or an observation.

Illniyar 11y ago

While I applaud finally adding the vote up (and even vote down) features, this feature look a bit overdesigned. I don't really get how I should "love" an issue, or "this issue makes me happy". Or the relevance of a "thinking face". The ui would be simpler with only 1 or 2 icons. At least there's no "this issue makes me sad/angry" buttons.

x1024 11y ago
"Facebook does this way, so we do it this way."

peterwaller 11y ago

My emojis look weird and not in keeping with the style of emojis elsewhere on the site http://imgur.com/rB9BdEr http://imgur.com/rB9BdEr

jbrooksuk 11y ago

A step in the right direction, nice! One thing I don't like is that you're able to add multiple reactions to the same item, it sends mixed signals.

bigethan 11y ago

It'd be nice if they added a little warning whenever submitting a comment that was only a '+1' or '-1' otherwise the discoverability is gonna take a while, maybe? Also a option to convert those comments into reactions for repository owners.

nmstoker 11y ago

My apologies if i missed a comment, but I'm surprised how few people support "giving it a go" and then deciding if it's good or bad. There's a multitude of user approaches, lots of people very touchy about their way of doing things (some extra so as this relates to their profession) Whilst not wishing to appear a fanboy, clearly Github have put a decent amount of thought into this, they've got a fairly good track record and they're responsive. If it's poor, they'll reassess it.

edelans 11y ago

Funny how I wanted to +1 this blog post =)

vaibhavkul 11y ago

How about a stop (hand palm) [1] instead of -1? [1] http://emojipedia.org/raised-hand/ http://emojipedia.org/raised-hand/

odbol_ 11y ago

The great thing about adding emoji Reactions to all our social media posts is that now AIs can finally learn human emotion. I'm sure Google is already training theirs on how different keywords make people feel.