Help Us Improve GitHub Community Discussion Categories 🫶

[samus-aran]

Hi everyone 👋

We’re planning a refresh of the GitHub Community discussion category structure, and we’d love your help shaping it. We found the similar exercise we had for the Copilot category was extremely beneficial, so we want to apply the same collaboration to the wider board.

We’re exploring a few different ways to organize the categories: Would you prefer seeing a simplified list of categories? Or do you think having sections focused around products or common use themes would be more helpful? We want to understand what feels most intuitive to you.

Our goal is to make it easier to discover the right place to ask, learn, and share - whether you’re brand new to GitHub or you’ve been building on it for years.

Additionally, we’re considering introducing new categories dedicated to more relaxed conversations, offering spaces for informal chats and community bonding. We would love to hear what areas you’d want to see introduced. To help new members feel at home, we’re also planning to introduce a dedicated Welcome category where everyone can introduce themselves and get started.

Proposed and Current Markdown representation (and current layout image)

Proposed Layout Markdown

- Accessibility
- Announcements
- AI & Copilot
  - Copilot Conversations
  - Copilot News and Announcements
- Apps, APIs & Webhooks
  - Apps, API and Webhooks
  - Mobile
- Automation & Developer tools
  - Actions
  - npm
  - Packages
- Code & Contributions
  - Codespaces
  - Pull Requests
  - Repositories
- Collaboration & Planning
  - Discussions
  - Projects & Issues
- Community Hub
  - A Welcome to GitHub
  - New to GitHub
  - Programming Help
- Education & Skilling
  - Discover: GitHub Best Practices
  - GitHub Education
  - GitHub Learn
- Enterprise & Security
  - Code Security
  - Enterprise
- Questions & Other Feedback
  - Questions, Other Feature Feedback & Ideas

Current Layout

Current Layout Markdown

- Announcements
- Discover
- Enterprise
- General
- GitHub Education
- New to GitHub
- Programming Help
- Universe
- Copilot
  - Copilot Conversations
  - Copilot News and Announcements
- GitHub Product Categories
  - Accessibility
  - Actions
  - API and Webhooks
  - Code Search and Navigation
  - Code Security
  - Codespaces
  - Discussions
  - Feed
  - Lists
  - Mobile
  - Models
  - npm
  - Packages
  - Pages
  - Profile
  - Projects and Issues
  - Pull Requests
  - Repositories
  - Sponsors

---

A quick note

Categories are always listed alphabetically, so admins can’t change their order. To work around this limitation, we may adjust category names to help everything feel clear and easy to find where needed.

We’d love your feedback:

• Do the current groupings make sense? Are the categories organized in a way that helps you find what you need?
• Are any categories unclear or too similar? If any names seem confusing or overlapping, what changes would you suggest?
• Are there any categories or topics missing? Is there a subject or interest you think should have its own space?
• What types of conversations would you like to see more? Tutorials, technical debates, career tips, community highlights - or something else?

Your input will directly inform what we implement. Of course, the GitHub Community team will have the final say, and sometimes we’ll need to make decisions that fit with how things work behind the scenes or with product teams. Thanks for understanding 💙

We’ll be transparent about what we can and can’t change, and we truly appreciate your time and thoughtfulness as we work through this.

We’ll collect feedback until 23rd February and will take all suggestions into careful consideration.

Thanks for helping us make the GitHub Community easier to navigate and better for everyone. We’re excited to hear what you think! ✨

[kingobeyno247-glitch]

Nice

[MattyTD]

❤️

[jsoref]

I used Google lens to get the current list... Quick feedback from a 🚌:

• Accessibility -- having this at the top encourages garbage content into this slot... I understand that discussions (a product wholy owned and operated by GitHub) doesn't have ways to help, but that's a series of bugs that should be fixed:

1. Provide a way for discussion categories to include one hidden Aria slot to be inserted at the top of the page
2. Provide custom sorting

• AI & Copilot
  • Copilot Conversations
  • Copilot News and Announcements

3. I guess models goes here. As I don't use it, I don't care.

• Apps, APIs & Webhooks
  • Apps, API and Webhooks
  • Mobile (GitHub Mobile)

3. As someone who regularly uses and files Mobile tickets (the Mobile team should reach out to me) and also works on integrations, I don't understand why Mobile would be hidden here. Unless you're expecting GitHub desktop to hide somewhere nearby.
4. I don't think normal users will find this category. That's fine, I don't mind being the only issue filer, but if you want others to find it, this isn't great.
5. No one is going to figure out where you want GitHub desktop bugs. Do they even live in this community?

...

• Code & Contributions
  • Codespaces
  • Pull Requests
  • Repositories

6. Where does search live in this?
7. Where does feed live in this? Especially given that it has a pending refresh
8. Where do lists live?
9. Where do pages live?
10. Where does profile live?

...

• Enterprise & Security

11. This sorting is confusing. You list Enterprise first, but the first child is Code Security
12. I think Enterprise is probably the rarer case. I'd expect Enterprise users to use someone other than a public forum, so I'd list it second

• Code Security
• Enterprise
• Other Questions & Feedback
  • Questions, Other Feature Feedback & Ideas

13. Where does Sponsors go? I recently saw a complaint that the support flow doesn't handle them well, as it's actually reasonably important, it shouldn't be lost in the shuffle (again).

[samus-aran]

Right, but you didn't include the current list which made it really hard to compare on mobile and discuss before/after.

Fair point. I have updated the op to include the current layout image + markdown within the "Proposed and Current Markdown representation (and current layout image)" collapsible section.

Then your markdown and picture are stale. I like that switch, but please update the post.

The markdown + picture are not stale. I'll clarify: visually Accessibility is at the top but structurally it's second after "A Welcome to GitHub". This is what we are experimenting to confirm the underlying structure assists with spam diversion.

If you do this better than some other teams, that might work. Note that I'm also concurrently poking at the Actions team for their templates and labels being horrible.

I know, I'm the one being poked 😄 Once we complete this category structure we'll go through the discussion templates that weren't affected by this layout change including Actions.

You have to give EACH label a description, not most of them: https://github.com/community/community/labels

Acknowledged, that should be a quick win. 🌟 edited: Done, we'll further review redundant ones after category structure change

Things have to be discoverable. I happen to be a reasonably good url hacker, but 99.9% of your audience won't be. Label descriptions aren't discoverable at all.

Can you explain more about this? I'm not understanding your use of "discoverable".

There are 40 pages for github desktop: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions?discussions_q=%22github+desktop%22&page=40, and they're scattered across your current categories. To make the Apps category better, I'd really encourage you to add GitHub Desktop as a sibling to Mobile. It makes things fit better. People will be more likely to use it if they're using GitHub desktop

We'll consider this. We need to align with the internal teams as well as the volume. 40 pages may seem a lot but we'll do a comparison to similar levels of discussion volumes.

Change Other Questions & Feedback to Questions, Other, and Feedback to get alphabetically lower. Or call the category Uncategorized or similar so that it's even further down the list (while still giving it children).

I like this switching of Questions to the front. Let's go with "Questions & Other Feedback". We'll keep the name of the child category . "Uncategorised" is too vague in my opinion.

Rename the category to Security & Enterprise -- that pushes it further down the list and then causes Code Security being first to match Security being before Enterprise in the category grouping. -- Security folks are used to being alphabetically late, and enterprise folks are too (plus Enterprise people are probably better at using find-in-page).

I appreciate the insight but renaming it would make it the bottom of the list and this could imply less importance than say the random conversations in "Questions & Other Feedback" folks might have - especially when concerning Enterprise customers. Probably not a sufficient impact but still - we'll stick to Enterprise & Security for now. We can re-evaluate the demand and activity again in the future for these categories.

Appreciate the feedback ✨

[samus-aran]

@jsoref Since this probably impacts you, we are reverting Mobile (GitHub Mobile) back to just Mobile. We'll track if there's an increase of users asking about mobile app development rather than specifically feedback on the GitHub Mobile app after launch.

[jsoref]

Can you explain more about this? I'm not understanding your use of "discoverable".

What path do you expect users to follow to find the labels descriptions page?

It exists, but I don't know a normal/natural path to it.

For this repository, note that:

1. users can't easily access the pull requests path
   (I'm haven't checked to see if the new setting to disable creating pull requests by non collaborators has been enabled, but it should be).
2. Issues are disabled

While there is a labels widget at the top of discussions, it brings up a search box:

This is a horrible way to read a labels list. Sure, for searching, it kinda works.

If you click a label, you just get: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions?discussions_q=is%3Aopen+label%3AQuestion

That doesn't help you understand what a label's description is.

For anyone else reading along, apparently, today (but possibly not tomorrow if they disable pull requests to this repository, which they could/should, or certainly could do in another organization that also uses discussions like this one) you can visit the pull requests page (which requires URL hacking): https://github.com/community/community/pulls

And then click 🔖 Labels to get to: https://github.com/community/community/labels

Where each item now has a description (thanks!).

Or you could URL hack directly to that page. But I don't expect new users to do that.

Fwiw, I don't think I actually remember that the button exists there to get to descriptions. (This is kind of the problem – and I doubt most people notice the button, let alone click it.) I mostly URL hack directly.

Let's say I'm interested in actions, so I click it:
https://github.com/community/community/issues?q=state%3Aopen%20label%3AActions

That clearly didn't work even though we've been talking about actions as a very active area.

How about announcements? Surely there are some?

Even though labels are shared between issues, pull requests, and discussions, the links only search the first two. Labels are a poor afterthought just like discussions and the Discussions team didn't connect these dots. (At some point they should talk to me, but first I have appointments with two other teams, one thanks to this thread. And I have limited time, so maybe next month.)

[jsoref]

I should note that I'm glad that you're demoting most of the top items from the old layout. I rarely ever want them, although I do occasionally check in on them when I'm morbidly curious to see what's there. (Their existence made it much harder to get where I wanted to go. -- The pictures above are from Chrome for Android w/ Request desktop site -- having to scroll past those items made things much more painful regardless of mode.)

I guess "Universe" is gone. Given how little content it has, that seems like a very good choice. (It's basically a popup category that got better billing than pretty much everything else.)

[MattyTD]

❤️

[jeremiah-snee-openx]

Would love to see copilot powered search for discussions, and when creating new discussion able to see similar discussions before creating the conciliate discussions and reduce duplication.

[jsoref]

@samus-aran this appears to have happened? Is there a follow-up announcement?

Fwiw,

6. Where does search live in this?

Is the first one that I care about. A coworker has a question about search.

[jsoref]

Apparently it's here:

• Community Notice: Category Changes Underway 🚧 #190454

[samus-aran]

Hey @jsoref Yes, that's the category restructure completed. We didn't include enhancements to the search or labels in this phase - that would need to be further advocated internally. I've ensured that feedback was carried over to the main announcement.

I'll be closing this discussion as it's being replaced with the follow-up announcement above. 👍