Issues that lead to PR, Issues that don't

[dynamictech-ops]

How do we structure issues? Are they broad high level funnels for ideas or are they previously identified action items that need to be addressed eventually as pull requests? Just so that our issues have a structured purpose.

Originally posted by @dynamictechco in https://github.com/dynamic-tech/general/issues/1#issuecomment-489379519

[dynamictech-ops]

Decisions Are Recorded

Issues can be used for discussions, which ultimately should lead to a PR because we want all discussions to lead to team decisions that are recorded.

Recorded for Posterity. You'll notice that issues can be edited (by accident), deleted, etc. Sure, GitHub's Issue Tracking System (ITS) has seemingly perfect audit trail (of edits), but that audit trail is out of our control. Anytime GitHub decides to save disk space, they can drop older audit trails.

Consider how git, by default, keeps a perfect record of commits (even orphaned ones; I hope you know your git well enough) for the last 30 days. Anytime I try to orphan a git commit and create a new one (presumably to erase what I said wrong before), your local git clone will immediately detect such a dastardly act. By keying into GitHub.com the commit ID you see in your local clone, you will still be able to see the commit(s) I (intentionally?) orphaned.

TODO: Test this with a new throw-away repo. Do you want me to do a write-up on this? You could write the bulk of the write-up yourself, and involve me (less time spent by me) to correct the write-up.

Throwaway Discussions Can Remain in ITS

We don't wanna spend a lot of effort git-tracking all our discussions. We only wanna record our decisions, and possibly also only the parts of our discussions that would explain why the decisions.