github: consider using GitHub Discussions

[dmitshur]

The Go project uses the GitHub issue tracker for tracking bugs, not for asking questions or having general discussions.

Proposal #23745 was about considering using it with a "question" label, which we tried, but it wasn't a great experience for everyone involved (an issue tracker is designed primarily for tracking bugs, not asking questions or having discussions), and so we didn't proceed with it.

As @mvdan mentioned in #23745 (comment), GitHub is working on a new Discussions feature that is specifically for having discussions rather than tracking bugs. Once it becomes available for general use, we can consider using it for the Go project. Edit: It's now available in beta.

This is the tracking issue.

(Until something changes, please see https://golang.org/wiki/Questions for a list of places to ask questions and having discussions.)

/cc @golang/osp-team

[tooolbox]

Could we consider moving this forward? It looks like there are some iterations to the Generics draft and I think it would be beneficial to discuss with the community members who perhaps aren't subscribed to or scanning go-nuts (looks like there's ~10 people in that thread). It's been made clear that the longstanding Generics issue isn't the place, so I'm wondering what the thought is regarding turning on the Discussions beta.

[aofei]

Discussions was released today, so I remembered this one. I really hope that Go will have a centralized and relatively casual place for people to discuss and ask questions. Please think about it, maybe give it a try?

[dmitshur]

Yes, it was!

I think we will want to give it some time to get a sense of how well it works (it's still in beta, after all), whether there's an API available (or becomes available in the future), and so on. So, I don't think we'll want to activate it on day one, but let's give it some time. This is the issue where we'll post updates.

(For anyone else seeing this issue, please keep https://golang.org/wiki/NoPlusOne in mind. If you just want to express that you'd like to see this happen, leave a reaction instead of a comment.)

[dmitshur]

By now, GitHub Discussions are being tried out in the Go project to a limited degree. See #47139.

[seankhliao]

related #61188