Api: The Winter Wishlist and other RFC issues aren't visible enough

[Yogarine]

As mentioned in https://github.com/Bungie-net/api/issues/148#issuecomment-450058247:

Posting topics that the API developers want people to take active participation in as issues isn't very visible, especially to newcomers.

@vthornheart-bng:

Ideally [it'd] be something we have an active/permanent record about so people can look back at the history (which is where Issues are handy, but indeed not easy to find).

A proposed quick solution is:

Perhaps it could be as easy as having something at the top of our readme file that links to current "issues that need your immediate attention/response" that then links to an issue for discussion. Hmm. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any!

Some solutions I can think of from the top of my head are:

• A mailing list with an archive to read old mailings.
• A blog (at developer.bungie.com for example) with an RSS feed.
• A dedicated Subreddit, or other similar third party solution.

[vthornheart-bng]

Thanks for those suggestions, I appreciate it! I like those ideas, particularly a blog or a subreddit - I don't know about other people, but I sometimes find mailing list-based conversations to end up hard to parse if conversations get forked or run on too long. I'll have to ask and see if I could get permission to do one of those options. A blog in particular is tempting, that'd be a nice spot to archive the random FAQ and tutorial information that I sometimes post up.

In the meantime, if anyone has any other suggestions, feel free to drop them in over here!

[Yogarine]

I don't know about other people, but I sometimes find mailing list-based conversations to end up hard to parse if conversations get forked or run on too long.

That's probably true. I'm just old-fashioned I guess. 😅

[floatingatoll]

This GitHub issues tracker is an excellent mailing list FWIW

On Dec 26, 2018, at 19:28, Alwin Garside [e-mail] wrote:

I don't know about other people, but I sometimes find mailing list-based conversations to end up hard to parse if conversations get forked or run on too long.

That's probably true. I'm just old-fashioned I guess. 😅

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[Yogarine]

@floatingatoll Though I see where you're getting at, afaict Github does not allow to subscribe to specific labels only. You either enable it for everything or nothing.

[ckhicks]

While I tend to use a tool like Gitify (Mac) for keeping up with repo updates, I love the idea of some "status" area like a blog to keep the latest happenings up to date. Happy to help if there's anything we can do as a community to keep things updated.

[floatingatoll]

I hesitate to say this (apologies if dupe!), but:

Winter wishlist, a time-dated Changelog, and various other tidbits of news are all clearly declared at https://github.com/Bungie-net/api/blob/master/README.md

However, since Thorn updates that file with direct pushes, GitHub has no way to notify us when changes occur.

Thorn, can you start using pull requests to update the README? You can self-approve and close them immediately. It would give us all a way to be notified by email/GitHub/etc. that a significant README update occurred. I think that notification would make the current setup more effective for us all until if/when someday something non-GitHub.

[Yogarine]

That would allow for notifications, but not really be a good platform for discussion.

Also, Github's releases feature can also be used to notify us of new version updates.

[Yogarine]

Hey @vthornheart-bng,

Just wondering if you have you given this any thought? I recently noticed I missed some releases and info about Cross Save because I was watching "releases only". I'm now watching everything, which is interesting and all, but eats up some of my productivity and is basically drinking from the firehose.

[vthornheart-bng]

Ah, with everything going on I'd forgotten about this! I'm glad you brought it up.

I still haven't looked into any of the options, but my gut feeling is that perhaps a Subreddit might be a path of least resistance. We're stretched thin these days in terms of resources and time to devote to the API, so we need something that'll minimize the overhead.

Would anyone object to the creation of a Subreddit for this purpose?

[Yogarine]

A subreddit sounds fun. That could also be a nice discussion platform for community developers and help keep the Github bug tracker a bit cleaner.

Reddit also supports RSS feeds for specific categories, so that solves my main issue as well. I'd say, go for it!

[floatingatoll]

Thorn: I’m scared of a subreddit, because it’s going to require a heavy hand of moderation to prevent regular players from using it as a “complain anywhere” forum (such as we’ve seen here from time to time), and that implies that you’ll be spending more time managing a subreddit and less time either working on the API (when at work) or not working on the API (when not at work), both of which are important.

On Aug 7, 2019, at 10:26 AM, Alwin Garside [e-mail] wrote:

A subreddit sounds fun. That could also be a nice discussion platform for community developers and help keep the Github bug tracker a bit cleaner.

Reddit also supports RSS feeds for specific categories, so that solves my main issue as well. I'd say, go for it!

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[Yogarine]

Well yeah, you'd need moderators, but those could be picked from the community.

Another simple option could be to just create a @Bungie_Dev Twitter account and tweet out a link to the Github issue whenever something important is announced.

[vthornheart-bng]

That is a fair point @floatingatoll - I was picturing it as more of an announcement board, but I could see it getting cluttered with other people posting and that would hamper the effort. I like that Twitter idea @Yogarine! I'll bring that up to some folks.

[vthornheart-bng]

Okay, so the folks over here brought up an alternative to simplify our workflow a bit - we already include the "rfc" label on issues that we deem important/concerning breaking changes or major API updates. Would filtering your email to bubble up Github issue emails with this tag suffice?

[as-com]

GitHub doesn't expose issue tags in notification emails, unfortunately. Perhaps putting "RFC" in the title of the issue would work?

[vthornheart-bng]

Ah, shoot. Yes, I can definitely switch over to doing that as a policy.

[Yogarine]

I guess... I'm not really fond of email filters because they (for me) are client-specific so I'd need to set them up on every client I use.

I kinda liked the idea of having a @BungieDev (or @BungieApiDev, or @BungieApi) Twitter. It's simple to enable notifications for, and looks nice next to @Bungie and @BungieHelp and all the localised Bungie Twitter accounts.
It can also be used to get quick feedback and post polls. Obviously you wouldn't want to do big discussions in Twitter but that's why you're linking to Github Issues in those Tweets.

Also, regarding the workflow, using Zapier you can automatically post a Tweet when an issue issue is created, and you can filter this down to specific tags as well:
https://zapier.com/apps/github/integrations/twitter

(Also, better register that Twitter account just in case before it gets nicked.)

[vthornheart-bng]

That's a fair point. I will bring that up - but if I don't get the thumbs up to do it, I think using RFC in the title may be the only change that we can do. I'll let you know what I find out.