GitHub Discussions
Learn about GitHub Discussions, a collaborative communication feature that helps your community ask questions, share information, and have open-ended conversations.
GitHub Discussions
GitHub Discussions provides a collaborative communication space for your community outside of your codebase. This feature allows project maintainers, contributors, and users to gather and have conversations about a project without tying them to specific issues or pull requests.
What are GitHub Discussions?
GitHub Discussions are dedicated spaces for open-ended conversations related to your project. Unlike issues (which typically focus on specific bugs or features) or pull requests (which focus on code changes), Discussions provide a forum-like experience for:
- General questions and answers
- Sharing ideas and announcements
- Community conversation and collaboration
- Documentation and knowledge sharing
- Categories: Organize discussions by topic
- Pinnable discussions: Highlight important conversations
- Convertible to issues: Turn discussions into actionable tasks
- Searchable: Find conversations easily
- Markdown support: Format text with rich formatting
- Reactions: Provide quick feedback without commenting
- Create clear categories with descriptions
- Pin important discussions for visibility
- Set community guidelines for discussions
- Regularly engage with community questions
- Convert relevant discussions to issues when they need action
- Close resolved discussions to keep the space organized
Setting Up GitHub Discussions
- Navigate to your repository on GitHub
- Go to Settings > Features
- Check the "Discussions" checkbox to enable the feature
- Click on the "Discussions" tab in your repository
- Create categories that align with your community needs
Effective Discussion Categories
A well-structured discussion board typically includes categories like:
- Announcements: Important updates from maintainers
- Q&A: Questions with accepted answers
- Ideas: Suggestions for the project
- Show and Tell: Community sharing their projects
- General: Miscellaneous conversations
The Q&A category has special functionality that allows marking answers as "solutions," making it easier for others to find answers to common questions.