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Comment by sergiotapia | Hacker News Reader

I think a good solution would be to make the bar higher to submit an issue. Disable Github Issues entirely and only allow true mailing list type issues that are significantly "uglier" and less "normie" friendly.

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No. I contribute many useful GitHub issues, exactly because it’s easily navigable and comfortable to use GH issues.

If you want to raise the bar, I think a reputation system would be better.

Who know who is doing quite ok? Stack Overflow.

I think a system like how Slashdot moderation works. You get X points to rate issues or comments based on how many points you have. Comments get a value -2 to 5. Default view only shows 0 to 5. You really only focus your efforts on removing things with a negative rating.

I remember it working surprisingly well, especially browsing at 1 or higher, and I've never understood why no one has replicated it. 'Karma' systems must get better engagement.

If people can easily post spam issues what's stopping them from spamming upvotes on them too?

Slashdot use meta-moderation. Mod points weren't given to anybody; you only get a few once in a while. And then the way you use them is rated by meta-moderators. The result of that meta-moderation determines whether or not you get more mod points in the future.

Yes, the mailing list is the best regardless

In my experience maintaining software, raising the bar to report bugs is a really bad idea. 99.9% of your customers/users will just stop using your software when they hit a bad bug. Only a tiny minority will bother to report bugs.

Github issues is already a pretty high barrier (you need a github account to post).

I make software targeted at a technical audience, and only 10% of bugs are reported on Github. So by requiring Github you already lose 90% of potential bug reports.

(numbers in this comment are very rough estimates)

But youtube-dl is targeted at a technical audience (it's a command-line application; I know there are GUI wrappers but those aren't what that repo is for.) So by your numbers, youtube-dl would only miss 10% of legitimate bug reports.

What I was trying to say is that even for a technical audience having to log in on Github is an obstacle and will reduce the number of reported bugs.

When software makes it harder to submit issues I often just don't submit them. For example, the way VS Code's issue reporting system is configured means I can't use it. The result is that I haven't reported any of the bugs I've hit in the software - sure I could probably dig up someone's email address, but why would I waste the time?

>When software makes it harder to submit issues I often just don't submit them.

That's the goal.

That's not helping. Mailing lists are annoying to use for bug reports. It will discourage useful contributions.

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