Skip to main content
Software Engineering

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Required fields*

5
  • 9
    I don't understand how cross-project references lead to messages similar to "me too" messages. There's a fundamental difference between a concrete link between two issues that allows people to navigate discussions and someone posting "me too" without any information. Commented Oct 31, 2023 at 14:17
  • @ThomasOwens If 50 projects have PRs with "implement workaround for numpy#12345" then 50 messages will appear under numpy#12345 — spammy? Commented Oct 31, 2023 at 14:31
  • 5
    My answer provides a lot more detail, but no. That's not spammy. And if I were a maintainer of numpy, I'd find it valuable to understand what project(s) are affected by this bug, which ones have implemented a workaround, what those workarounds have been, which ones may be waiting for numpy to deliver a fix. Having direct links to issues, discussions, and pull requests for other projects gives me valuable insights and a way to contact people who are affected by the issue to make an informed decision on next steps. Commented Oct 31, 2023 at 14:43
  • 7
    Backlinks aren't spammy, and often provide relevant context to maintainers (real-world problems with their software). Absolutely set links for everything, this makes it much easier for other people to follow. They also won't generate notifications. A "me too" comment doesn't add value, but does send a notification to everyone who has subscribed. They are really annoying. At most, such a comment achieves "bumping" the issue in a view that sorts by "most recently active", but more likely it's just getting the issue locked. Commented Oct 31, 2023 at 15:36
  • The notification thing mentioned by @amon is really the issue with spam on platforms like GitHub. In big projects, it’s not unusual for major issues to have hundreds of people subscribed to them, so a comment just to say ‘me too’ is pestering potentially hundreds of people, possibly going as far as push notifications on their phones, all to add nothing to the discussion. Commented Nov 1, 2023 at 1:49