

Show HN: Feature voting for GitHub - Ecco
http://feathub.com/

======
BinaryIdiot
This is interesting but like that one site that was bought recently (get
satisfaction) this is another site that I, as a repository owner, has to track
down to find customer feedback. Kinda like Gitter.im, yet another external
service I have to be aware of.

It's difficult to be omnipresent so I can track all of the different pieces of
feedback my project may be getting; even though it's not ideal I'd rather
everyone just funnel through Github issues just so I can interact with them
and be aware of any issues or requests. I don't want to miss out on any
feedback should it be on an external service I do not know about.

~~~
sirwolfgang
It seems like you build off the comments of issues, parsing for the :+1:, you
could functionally provide the same tooling, but in the same additive way that
waffle.io does.

~~~
Ecco
We're not parsing GitHub comments ATM. That's a good idea though, but it would
be difficult to track content. Maybe it's just simpler to track issues in one
place and improvements in another?

~~~
sirwolfgang
Looking at Waffle.io, it seems to me that they don't actually store any data
on their end. Everything is managed with issues, comments, and tagging.

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crdoconnor
Why doesn't it link directly to issues on github?

It would get annoying having two separate lists of features (and, presumably,
bugs). One on github and one on this service.

Still, if it just did voting on issues on github, I'd find it pretty useful.

~~~
Ecco
That's something we made on purpose. We believe feature requests and issues
should be treated differently.

In our vision, an issue refers to a bug in the software. It doesn't need
voting: it's up to the developers to figure out the gravity of the situation
(or to an analytics tool that gather how many times a given issue arises).

On the other hand, a feature request refers to a new capability of said
software. It then makes sense for users to vote, because, as a developer, it's
hard to know which feature is the most expected.

~~~
crdoconnor
>We believe feature requests and issues should be treated differently.

Github doesn't. Issues can be tagged as 'bug' or 'enhancement' and they're
both treated essentially the same way.

>it's up to the developers to figure out the gravity of the situation

Sure would be nice if there were some sort of tool that could help with
figuring that out.

~~~
Karunamon
Those are just default tags to a (very limited) issue tracking system.
"Enhancement" could very well be (and is) used by developers for planned
features, not necessarily requests from end users.

Heck, the title of the page you access that system on is called "issues".

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lighthawk
I like the idea, but would prefer if GitHub just integrated this
functionality. Otherwise, how will the developers know that something was
voted on unless they use these third-party tools?

~~~
Ecco
They would know because they would have registered their project on FeatHub
:-)

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guiomie
I'm surprised this feature isn't in github already ... is there a reason?

~~~
steveklabnik
It was, long ago, but it was removed. I believe the reason was that it wasn't
very useful, but that was a while back, so I could be wrong.

~~~
michaelmior
Huh. I've been using GH since about the first year it launched I don't recall
ever seeing this. Do you mean a way to vote on things, or feature requests?

~~~
steveklabnik
There was a little up vote triangle on issues, but it was really really long
ago.

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felipesabino
Is it me or this is very similar to the way zenhub.io [1] works?

Anyway, I recently also stumble upon a similar tool that enables voting for PR
and even auto merges the code [2], which is not precisely the scope that
feathub targets, but it is very useful and similar enough to worth mentioning
it :p

[1] [https://www.zenhub.io/](https://www.zenhub.io/)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9351286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9351286)

------
munro
It's really hard to add features to someone else's app in such a disconnected
way, for everyone in their community. Most people haven't heard of your site,
and it's also hard to form habits of checking Github, as well as your page.
Usability improvements ... should makes things easier!

Repo owners have control over what gets displayed on their project page (to an
extent), and can drive their subset of users to your app.

If owners are having trouble seeing how many people up voted a feature, then
make a bot that counts the number of thumbs up in an issue tagged "feature",
then update the issue title. This would be really helpful to those people.

Also, if owners want to see the top feature requests, make an embeddable image
for the README that clicks to the full list. People love embeddable widgets.
:D

Those two things is all I observe your app does, plus you had to reinvent
commenting, which is a huge turn off.

There are loads of popular tools out there that integrate into Github, it's
worth checking them out to see how they weasel their features into Github.com!

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dvcc
The thumb + 1 scares me, it makes me think I am going to like it on Facebook,
and that I am somehow connected. Even though I know it's not.

~~~
Ecco
Just click the "Thumb down -1" then :-D Facebook denied it from us for so
long, now's your time to take revenge :-)

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krallja
[https://twitter.com/mdo/status/591707867498946560](https://twitter.com/mdo/status/591707867498946560)

Mark Otto ‏@mdo · 24 minutes ago Hey @feathub, please remove Bootstrap from
your site—we've no plans to use it and it's disingenuous to imply we do.

~~~
Ecco
Legitimate request of course. That was a genuine mistake from our part, the
service is opt-in only now. Here's the full Twitter conversation:
[https://twitter.com/feathub/status/591715888782520320](https://twitter.com/feathub/status/591715888782520320)

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telecuda
On this topic, can someone recommend a simple feature voting tool with SSO?
Something similar to this but not tied to GitHub?

When I looked again at Get Satisfaction, User Voice, etc they're all so
bloated with features and complication.

Looking for a way to direct my signed in users to a simple page to vote up a
list of features we're considering.

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vohof
Features like these are better if integrated into Github itself. There's this
long thread about implementing a +1 feature
[https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/9](https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/9)

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kyle_t
I've been looking for something like this for a while now but honestly if you
run a non-technical service requiring your users to sign up for a github
account (just to vote on features) is a pretty big ask. Integration with other
AUTH services like Facebook/Google would be very beneficial.

~~~
Ecco
That's a decision we made on purpose.

We figured out our early adopters would be on GitHub, that's why we started
with GitHub login. Fell free to add a feature request on
[http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub](http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub) :-)

Also, while we're at it, we could even consider anonymous voting
([http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub/+15](http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub/+15))

This raises the question of the gameability of the voting, but this could be
mitigated using a mixture of cookies, captchas and browser fingerprinting.

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wkonkel
The Bountysource browser extension is similar. It works with existing votes
and +1's from GitHub, Bugzilla, Trac, etc.

[https://www.bountysource.com/extension](https://www.bountysource.com/extension)

~~~
Ecco
Shamelessly advertising your own product, heh? ;-) (GitHub seems to believe
you work a Bountysource:
[https://github.com/wkonkel](https://github.com/wkonkel))

Anyway, you're right, it is similar. FeatHub doesn't require an extension
though, so you can just point your users to your project's voting page.

~~~
Fogest
Bountysource doesn't require you to use another website though. You stick to
using Github and get some added functionality.

~~~
vollmond
It apparently requires a browser extension. Is that actually better? I'd
rather direct my customers to a third-party site I have a relationship with
than ask them to install a plugin.

(Disclaimer: I have no product or customers to worry about, just musing)

~~~
bhousel
You don't need to install the plugin with Bountysource to use it - it just
adds a handy button and counter to the issue list.

You can still direct users to the Bountysource page for your project if that's
what you prefer.

(I'm not associated with Bountysource at all - I just think it's pretty good
at what it does).

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thedaniel
It says "See how they are listening to their users" on the home page. Does
this imply that not using this tool or not desiring feature voting is the same
as ignoring your users? That's some pretty unpleasant positioning IMO.

~~~
32131532526
I read that as "See the way (the solution) they're using to listen to their
users."

~~~
Ecco
That was the intended meaning :-) Do you guys have any suggestion on how to
remove the ambiguity?

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amjith
This is fantastic. This is perfect for an OpenSource maintainer to get insight
into the users priorities on the issues. Thank you for creating this tool.

I'd like to use it for one of my projects
([https://github.com/dbcli/pgcli](https://github.com/dbcli/pgcli)). Even
though I've authorized feathub to access my organizations, the repo is not
listed in the drop down.

~~~
Ecco
Thanks! That's weird that it didn't appear… I'll look into it.

Meanwhile, I've created the project for you. Here you go:
[http://feathub.com/dbcli/pgcli](http://feathub.com/dbcli/pgcli)

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Ecco
If you have any idea for an improvement, we would love to hear about it there:
[http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub](http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub) :-)

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fosk
It doesn't load more than 30 projects in the dropdown menu when I try to setup
my repository.

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mkolodny
I'd use a Chrome extension that let me request features for the website I'm
currently on.

