Discussion should be able to link to issue and versa visa, like issues to issues.

[huan]

I'd like to be able to just referring a discussion in an issue and then the issue will be displayed under the discussion, just like the behavior of issues.

[kookma]

This is an essential feature! Like Issue and PR any reference, closing /merging and all status shall be reflected on discussion without these features, it is difficult to follow up cases!

[awvwgk]

Cross-referencing other discussion, issues or PRs would be a very helpful addition to Discussions. I'm currently missing the possibility to easily find issues or PRs referencing a discussion thread.

[evi-liu]

Thank you for the feedback! We are tracking this request on our end and gauging customer impact based on the upvotes and reactions of this post.

[aredridel]

This would be great to have between discussions, not just between issues and discussions

[ShravanSunder]

yes! 👆🏾

[mjashanks]

Please do this 🙏 I am currently doing this manually by adding comments everywhere.

[aredridel]

Same!

[2jojo]

yes!

[michael-hawker]

Cross-linking is one of the most powerful things on GitHub which helps connect projects and work together, so this really is a big oversight in trying to onboard using discussions and issues together to manage projects.

[irh]

I'd really like to see this happen. I'm seeing the potential for a nice flow of Discussions -> Issues -> PRs, but without autolinking the discussions feel disconnected.

[wdawson]

Totally agree with this. It's too easy to lose valuable context from other places. Sometimes there are clear duplicates, but the vast majority of the time there are subtle nuances with each related thing. It would be extremely valuable to be reading the discussion and see other places that referenced it (other Discussions, PRs, Issues). This is preventing my team from converting some issues to discussions because the linked context is so valuable.

[ShravanSunder]

a way to link to other discussions from discussions would be great as mentioned above

[michael-hawker]

Yeah, I just linked to an issue from a discussion and was very surprised to not see that mention in the issue itself like I would when referencing it from any other issue, pr, or commit... ☹

[reynolek]

We are in the process of moving our OSS repo over to discussions, and this topic just came up in our standup as pretty much a blocker.

The loss of context is pretty impactful not only to maintainers but also to community members.

[huan]

We decided not to use discussions anymore due to this blocker. sad.

[ariaieboy]

any update ?

[cliffordfajardo]

+1 for this feature
I mentioned this issue of #4301 & it would be nice to this inside of this discussion

Mock up:

[xxchan]

This feature is critical to make discussion more useful. For example, this discussion risinglightdb/risinglight#503 talks about a bigger problem which links many issues. Without autolinking, the issues cannot know there's a big discussion there.

[hhstore]

+1

[dmerand]

I'm here to support this - my team would greatly benefit from being able to backlink discussion<->discussion, discussion<->issue etc. Without this backlinking it's a big step back from just using issues for discussions. Polls and Q&A are nice but this feature feels incomplete without backlinking.

[huan]

Today I raised this thread to the GitHub product team in the Star meeting.

I hope we can hear from the team soon, and looking forward to seeing this new feature being considered seriously in the GitHub product roadmap to make a better community Discussion product on GitHub!

[entcheva]

Thank you @huan for bringing this thread up in the GitHub Stars meeting today! We'll discuss with the Discussions team and I'll circle back here soon.

[danielorbach]

Any update on this most valuable feature?

/cc @entcheva @huan @evi-liu

[marcindulak]

I'm discovering this thread, and it's already a year after the issue was brought during the meeting. Is there an update @entcheva?

[marcindulak]

Github marked this as the answer, and closed the dicussion, most likely mistakenly.
The desire from the discussion participants is to reopen this discussion.
Therefore I opened another discussion, asking for this https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/123987

Below are more discussions on the topic of auto-linking discussions and issues.
These are newer discussions, linked here only for reference.
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/3211
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/4301
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/73401

[xihajun]

it has being 2 years, can we probably get any update for this? @entcheva

[marcindulak]

Two years since @entcheva comment will be on November 22 2024.
However, if we wait until December 12 2024, it will be 4 years since @huan opened the discussion.

[huan]

😅 I have been following up on a Google App Script issue for almost 10 years. That's why I love startups most of the time: it is straightforward to schedule a meeting with the Founder and CEO, and they will tell you, "No, we will not do that in the near future," with a reason why.

[marcindulak]

@LiteBrite82 - I see the discussion is "Closed", but I believe the feature is not implemented yet.

Is github is still monitoring the interest in this feature, to place it on a roadmap?

[black7375]

In some cases, backlinks are required, such as commits following a vote to change a logo or package name.

[huan]

Sorry but I cannot understand… what happened here? 🧐

[irh]

It's not healthy community management to close discussions without a comment, it's a shame to see that happening here.

I think that this was closed because there's an answer marked that links to similar discussions. #73401 has also been closed, I left a comment on #3211 to try to give it a boost.

[marcindulak]

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/2971 - the present discussion has most votes, so I would argue it is the one to keep open.

[LiteBrite82]

Hi @marcindulak

Yes, I marked the links to other discussions as the answer and closed the discussion in an attempt to consolidate the topic. This discussion gets overlooked for vote counting as it is 4 years old. Just trying to update it to see if the community is still interested - much has changed in 4 years.

I can reopen the discussion, but as far as internal data collection goes, I think its better to transition to the newest thread and link the legacy threads to it so the devs can see its still an in demand feature. It will have much higher visibility and will be easier to prioritize with fresh votes.

[LiteBrite82]

Looking into other options because I agree with @michael-hawker, its better for the overall discussion for this thread to be the main one. I just want to make sure the data (votes and reactions) isn't being overlooked due to the age of the discussion.

Doing some research before making another change to the discussion - measure twice, cut once.

[marcindulak]

I have some comments, which may help in the decision:

1. If you say that github project managers overlook old problems, which over the years acquired a large number of votes, this is concerning. It's natural that people may keep asking for a feature, but after some time with no response they move on.
   This xkcd illustrates it https://xkcd.com/2881/

2. The newer, duplicate discussion https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/3211, from January 22 2021, is only about a month newer than our https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/2971, from December 12 2020. I would say the (concerning) approach of focusing on newer issues does not apply here.

3. The lack of the very feature we are asking for, autolinking of issues <-> discussions, and/or discussions <-> discussions, is one of the reasons why it's hard to estimate the real interest in this feature. People may go around and discourage projects from using github discussions due to the autolinking functionality lacking, and recommend sticking to issues. I have personally advised against github discussions a few times, last time in Consider transferring issues to the new repo inconshreveable/ngrok#952, but also for internal projects. Without autolinking back to https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/2971, we cut off one information channel about how many times people abandoned the idea of using discussions.
   This can be contrasted to the case of issues, which support autolinking, and the interest in the given functionality is visible also from the number of autolinks and not only upvotes, check for example Anchor link checking fails tcort/markdown-link-check#304 or ImportError: cannot import name 'soft_unicode' from 'markupsafe' (/usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/markupsafe/__init__.py) pallets/markupsafe#284.

4. It is true that some projects use discussions like a kind of waste basket, for beginner questions (see for example ws is not working miguelgrinberg/microdot#200), or deprioritized issues. To support this use of discussions, it may be possible implement the autolinking functionality such that the behavior is set on a per repository basis, or on a more specific granularity level, like for incoming and outgoing links.