New Issue Type: Discussion issues

[ryandemopoulos]

Hello Windows UI community! Today we introduced a new type of Issue for our repository: Discussion issues. We also renamed the Feature Request issue type to called “Feature Proposal”.

Background: People with ideas for how WinUI could be improved have been filing Feature Request issues. Sometimes these are very specific (e.g. please build a specific control that does this specific thing), and sometimes they are more vague (e.g. please make WinUI look nicer than it does right now). It’s easy for the WinUI team to adjudicate specific Feature Requests; however, the vaguer ones usually require more time to bake and discuss, and in some cases they might not ever yield any tangible ‘thing’ that should be added to WinUI.

We’ve decided to split what was formerly the “Feature Request” type into two issue types:

• Discussion issue – These issues are meant to capture a budding / interesting idea to discuss as a community for how WinUI could be improved or altered, but has not yet coalesced into a specific ‘thing’ that we should ultimately do. For example, see Issue Discussion: X# / Xaml Sharp / Xaml Code - inspired by SwiftUI #804 (which is a great discussion topic started by @mdtauk) on ideas for simplifying Xaml. Discussion issues are meant to be a sharing of ideas and debate, and pretty much any topic is welcomed—they’re sort of like internet forum posts. You’ll be able to spot these by searching for the discussion label. If/when the conversation produces a concrete ‘thing’ that should be added to WinUI, a Feature Proposal should be filed.

• Feature Proposal issue – These issues are concrete, specific proposals about ways that the filer or community feels we should improve WinUI. You’ll be able to spot these by searching for the feature proposal label. The WinUI team will treat these as a thumbs-up / thumbs-down proposal that needs to be adjudicated, rather than a casual discussion or forum-like topic. Feature Proposals might not have everything completely figured out when they are filed, but there should be enough concreteness that the issue represents a specific improvement we should consider for WinUI.

We love hearing from the community and discussing ways to improve WinUI with you! If you have an idea for how to improve WinUI but aren’t quite sure exactly how to do it or how it would work, or if you just want to chat with the community about some WinUI-related musing, then file a Discussion issue. If you have a specific feature you’d like to see, such as “make specific feature ‘X’”—then file it as a Feature Proposal and we can decide if that improvement makes sense for the direction of the WinUI project. Note: some existing Feature Request (now Feature Proposal) issues would be more appropriately categorized as a Discussion issue, so we’ll convert those in the coming days; we’ll be sure to leave a comment in the issue when the switch is made.

Finally, let me say a huge thanks to our great community and all the lively discussions we have on how to make WinUI awesome for everyone!