This is interesting but like that one site that was bought recently (get satisfaction) this is another site that I, as a repository owner, has to track down to find customer feedback. Kinda like Gitter.im, yet another external service I have to be aware of.
It's difficult to be omnipresent so I can track all of the different pieces of feedback my project may be getting; even though it's not ideal I'd rather everyone just funnel through Github issues just so I can interact with them and be aware of any issues or requests. I don't want to miss out on any feedback should it be on an external service I do not know about.
I agree with you, having to keep tabs with thousands of new services is annoying.
In that case though, you shouldn't have to worry about missing some users' feedback. That's why you have to register your project with FeatHub before people can give feedback (we temporarily enabled anonymous import to boostrap the service, but that won't last). This way, as a repo owner, you know you have enabled FeatHub.
Also, it's not implemented now, but we could imagine notifying owners on a regular basis. I suggested the improvement there: http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub/+8
The pattern of "Oh, sure, we're associated with that project" is a very dark one. "Contribute to something on GitHub off of GitHub" has been used by a number of hard-to-verify bitcoin tip sites, recruiter schemes, and shadier characters. I hope featurehub goes opt-in very soon so it can avoid a noisy argument like this one that made it to HN last October:
It seems like you build off the comments of issues, parsing for the :+1:, you could functionally provide the same tooling, but in the same additive way that waffle.io does.
We're not parsing GitHub comments ATM. That's a good idea though, but it would be difficult to track content. Maybe it's just simpler to track issues in one place and improvements in another?
And, like Get Satisfaction, it's a pretty dick move to imply to my users that I'm affiliated with you and that their voices can be heard through you. I certainly have sympathy for Mark Otto (https://twitter.com/mdo/status/591707867498946560) asking them to stop doing that.
Gitter.im has an IRC interface so at least I can idle in my projects gitter irc chat in emacs when programming in the best programming language node.js
Thanks, I should probably look into that... I already have a pandora and slack window open all the time, and to add gitter.im to the mix, it's rarely open... I kind of wish I could just do it all from IRC.
I'm starting to think that creating a newer, extensible IRC client might be an opportunity.
It could easily use the API to parse comments for +1 / thumbsup emoji / etc too. Also could have a lil viral component, when you +1 on the app, it adds a comment with a link to the app.
That's something we made on purpose. We believe feature requests and issues should be treated differently.
In our vision, an issue refers to a bug in the software. It doesn't need voting: it's up to the developers to figure out the gravity of the situation (or to an analytics tool that gather how many times a given issue arises).
On the other hand, a feature request refers to a new capability of said software. It then makes sense for users to vote, because, as a developer, it's hard to know which feature is the most expected.
> We believe feature requests and issues should be treated differently.
If you want other people to use what you made, you may have to do what they want. :)
> In our vision, an issue refers to a bug in the software.
Overloading causes miscommunication, and can affect how we think! Github issues aren't about issues, as in bugs. It's a moldable concept to keep track important things. Lots of repos already use Github issues to track features, as well as many other things, why not help their lives?
> If you want other people to use what you made, you may have to do what they want. :)
Exactly. First thing I did when visiting the comments here was see if someone had brought up this issue. Just some more feedback (to indicate a consensus): I won't consider using this tool unless it provides easy access back to GitHub.
An example of a successful project that does bi-directional linking is BountySource.
Those are just default tags to a (very limited) issue tracking system. "Enhancement" could very well be (and is) used by developers for planned features, not necessarily requests from end users.
Heck, the title of the page you access that system on is called "issues".
I like the idea, but would prefer if GitHub just integrated this functionality. Otherwise, how will the developers know that something was voted on unless they use these third-party tools?
Huh. I've been using GH since about the first year it launched I don't recall ever seeing this. Do you mean a way to vote on things, or feature requests?
Is it me or this is very similar to the way zenhub.io [1] works?
Anyway, I recently also stumble upon a similar tool that enables voting for PR and even auto merges the code [2], which is not precisely the scope that feathub targets, but it is very useful and similar enough to worth mentioning it :p
It's really hard to add features to someone else's app in such a disconnected way, for everyone in their community. Most people haven't heard of your site, and it's also hard to form habits of checking Github, as well as your page. Usability improvements ... should makes things easier!
Repo owners have control over what gets displayed on their project page (to an extent), and can drive their subset of users to your app.
If owners are having trouble seeing how many people up voted a feature, then make a bot that counts the number of thumbs up in an issue tagged "feature", then update the issue title. This would be really helpful to those people.
Also, if owners want to see the top feature requests, make an embeddable image for the README that clicks to the full list. People love embeddable widgets. :D
Those two things is all I observe your app does, plus you had to reinvent commenting, which is a huge turn off.
There are loads of popular tools out there that integrate into Github, it's worth checking them out to see how they weasel their features into Github.com!
I've been looking for something like this for a while now but honestly if you run a non-technical service requiring your users to sign up for a github account (just to vote on features) is a pretty big ask. Integration with other AUTH services like Facebook/Google would be very beneficial.
We figured out our early adopters would be on GitHub, that's why we started with GitHub login. Fell free to add a feature request on http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub :-)
This raises the question of the gameability of the voting, but this could be mitigated using a mixture of cookies, captchas and browser fingerprinting.
It apparently requires a browser extension. Is that actually better? I'd rather direct my customers to a third-party site I have a relationship with than ask them to install a plugin.
(Disclaimer: I have no product or customers to worry about, just musing)
It says "See how they are listening to their users" on the home page. Does this imply that not using this tool or not desiring feature voting is the same as ignoring your users? That's some pretty unpleasant positioning IMO.
This is fantastic. This is perfect for an OpenSource maintainer to get insight into the users priorities on the issues. Thank you for creating this tool.
I'd like to use it for one of my projects (https://github.com/dbcli/pgcli). Even though I've authorized feathub to access my organizations, the repo is not listed in the drop down.
It's difficult to be omnipresent so I can track all of the different pieces of feedback my project may be getting; even though it's not ideal I'd rather everyone just funnel through Github issues just so I can interact with them and be aware of any issues or requests. I don't want to miss out on any feedback should it be on an external service I do not know about.