Need a way to see past discussions

[cmbarton]

If anyone has time today, we really need an easy way for people to see all the past discussions that Allen has worked so hard to set up.

• Best: "View related discussions" side menu, like "View related issues" AND a menu item or button somewhere to let people see all past discussions.

• If at all possible today: At least we need a menu item or button somewhere (or both) to get people to the all discussions page where they can filter by the different categories.

[alee]

Hmm, I think we may want to have the Discuss this? link go just to the specific category and rely on people adding a new discussion they select the correct category.

Going straight to the post a new discussion form e.g.

https://github.com/openmodelingfoundation/openmodelingfoundation.github.io/discussions/new?category=general

has a few issues:

1. if you're not signed in it just brings up a generic 404 page (try it in an incognito window)
2. you don't see previous discussions before posting a new discussion

[cmbarton]

Not exactly what I meant (need to check the signed in part). People need to be able to get here easily:

https://github.com/openmodelingfoundation/openmodelingfoundation.github.io/discussions

For convenience, it would also be nice to go directly to the discussions in a given category. For example, here for accessibility standards discussions:

https://github.com/openmodelingfoundation/openmodelingfoundation.github.io/discussions/categories/accessibility-standards

This access to all relevant past discussion posts is different from what to do when someone wants to create a new one.

[cmbarton]

Not exactly what I meant (need to check the signed in part). People need to be able to get here easily:

https://github.com/openmodelingfoundation/openmodelingfoundation.github.io/discussions

For convenience, it would also be nice to go directly to the discussions in a given category. For example, here for accessibility standards discussions:

https://github.com/openmodelingfoundation/openmodelingfoundation.github.io/discussions/categories/accessibility-standards

This access to all relevant past discussion posts is different from what to do when someone wants to create a new one.

I just checked with an incognito window and the link to see past discussions works fine. It's only if you want to start a new discussion or add to an existing one that you need to be signed in I think.

[alee]

I probably wasn't clear in my response either, trying to do too many things at once.

The old "Discuss this?" link went straight to the form to submit a post for discussion in a pre-selected category. However, that form is poor usability because a) you must be signed in for it to display properly and if you aren't signed in it does not prompt you to sign in first, it just shows a GitHub 404 page and b) you don't see any of the previous discussions in that category that you might comment on instead of creating a new top level discussion topic in that category.

Instead of creating an additional link to the view all discussions I opted for the simpler solution of having "Discuss this?" go to the relevant discussion category for the page you happen to be on (which was its original behavior actually). You can easily "View all" categories once you're on the github discussions tab.

[cmbarton]

I think I follow. This is your 'option 2' from the other day? As long as this is a place where anyone can 1) easily see any discussion thread already posted and 2) create a new discussion (i.e., the "new discussion" button will create a new post in the selected category, then this seems like a good solution for the present. Maybe even forever.

[cmbarton]

Testing what you've operationalized, it looks fine. It would be convenient to have the associated category already selected. But if you try to just create a new post and don't do anything, it tells you to select a category.

[alee]

Right, I assume that as GitHub Discussions continues to improve they will change the default behavior of the "New Discussion" button to preselect the category you were in if you happened to be filtering by category when you clicked it.

It might help them along if we all vote on that topic: community/community#2999 (comment)