Discussions

What a Discussions room is

A Discussions room is a forum scoped to one room. Categories hold topics, a topic is its opening post plus its replies, and replies can be liked, reacted to and quoted. If the room is set up as a question board, one reply can be marked as the answer.

It sits between Chat and Q&A. Chat scrolls away. Q&A is strictly one question, one accepted answer. Discussions is for the conversations in between — a proposal, an announcement, a long argument about an approach — where the thread itself is the useful artefact.

Add a Discussions room

1. In the space's sidebar, click + and pick Discussions.
2. Name it and set visibility: everyone in the space, or certain people.

Choose the room's mode

On first visit the room asks what kind of forum it is. The choice is deliberate — there is no default, and the room will not show you topics until you pick one.

• Voting — a question board. Topics and replies can be upvoted, one reply can be accepted as the answer, and a Top sort appears.
• Natural — a discussion board. No voting anywhere and no accepted answer. A new reply bumps its topic to the top of the list.

You can change the mode later from the forum type dialog. Switching to natural hides existing votes rather than deleting them, so switching back restores them. The rule is enforced on the server, not just in the interface: with the room in natural mode, liking a post, upvoting a topic and accepting an answer all refuse.

Categories

Categories organize the room. Each one has a name, a description, an emoji for the sidebar, and a colour. A category can have one parent, and only one — the tree is two levels deep and no deeper, so nobody has to hunt through nesting to find a thread.

Topics filed in no category appear under General.

Limits: a category name is up to 100 characters and a description up to 500.

Topics and replies

A topic has a title of up to 300 characters, a body written in markdown, and a list of replies. The opening post is reply position 1, and it cannot be deleted on its own — deleting the topic is the way to remove it.

What you can do to a topic:

• Pin it. Pinned topics appear as spotlight cards at the top of the list, up to four of them, each with a colour accent.
• Close it. A closed topic takes no further replies.
• Label it. Labels are room-wide, coloured, and up to 60 characters.
• Accept an answer, in voting mode. Only the person who opened the topic can do this, and the opening post cannot be its own answer.

Replies support markdown and can quote an earlier reply. A reply cannot be edited down to nothing — emptying one is refused with "A post cannot be emptied — delete it instead."

Reactions and likes

Replies take the eight GitHub reactions: 👍, 👎, 😄, 🎉, 😕, ❤️, 🚀 and 👀. Clicking one again takes it back.

Likes are separate from reactions and only exist in voting mode. A topic's upvote count is the number of likes on its opening post.

Who can do what

Every member with write access in the room can post topics and replies.

• Only the author of a topic can rename it, close it, or delete it. The same goes for editing or deleting a reply.
• Only the topic's author can accept an answer.
• Anyone with write access can pin. Pinning is housekeeping, like moving a card on a board, so it is not restricted to the author.

Everything in the room is behind sign-in. There is no public or guest view of a Discussions room.

Following topics

Opening a topic subscribes you to it. Replying to one subscribes you too. Every new reply notifies each subscriber with the first 140 characters of the reply and a link straight to the topic.

You can subscribe to or unsubscribe from any topic by hand. Notifications from this room fall under the Mentions & replies category, so you can mute them globally from Notifications without leaving the room.

Finding things

The topic list gives you sorts, filters and a search box.

• Sorts — Latest (most recently replied to, the default), Hot, Categories (grouped), New (most recently opened), and Top (voting mode only). If the room switches to natural while you are on Top, the list quietly falls back to Latest.
• Filters — Open, Closed, or All, plus a label filter.
• Search tokens — the box understands is:open, is:closed, category:"General" and label:bug. Anything else matches the title.

The list shows 20 topics per page.

Hot ranks by activity in the last seven days, scoring each reply as three points and each like as one.

Saved replies

A saved reply is a snippet you can drop into any thread — the answer you find yourself writing every week, the standard request for a reproduction case. Saved replies belong to you, not to the room, so they follow you into every Discussions room you can post in. A saved reply's title is up to 120 characters; the body has no limit.

Referencing other work

Typing # in the editor opens a picker of things to link: topics in this room, and Kanban cards from anywhere in the space (up to 300 of them). Referencing a card by its key is how a discussion stays tied to the work it is about.

Most helpful

A panel in the right rail ranks the room's top ten contributors over the last 30 days. The score is one point per like received and three points for an accepted answer.

Tips

• Pick voting mode only if you will actually accept answers. An unused accept button makes every thread look unresolved.
• Keep the category list short. Two levels is the maximum the room allows, and one level is usually enough.
• Close resolved topics. A closed thread still reads, but it stops collecting replies that the next reader has to wade through.
• Use labels for state, categories for subject. Categories are where a thread lives; labels are what is true about it right now.

FAQ

How is this different from a Q&A room? Q&A is built around one question, tags and an accepted answer, with per-room reputation. Discussions is built around threads: categories, replies, reactions, pinning and closing. A Discussions room in voting mode can do question-and-answer too — pick whichever shape your team actually uses.

Can we change the mode after people have voted? Yes. Switching to natural hides votes rather than deleting them, and switching back brings them into view again.

Can people outside the organization read a discussion? No. There is no public link for this room type.

Why can anyone pin, but only the author close? Closing ends a conversation, which is the author's call. Pinning only changes where a topic sits in a list, which is tidying.