Discussions is a new feature of GitHub for asking questions or discussing topics outside of specific Issues or Pull Requests. Before being available to all projects in December 2020, it had been tested on selected open source software projects. To understand how developers use this novel feature, how they perceive it, and how it impacts the development processes, we conducted a mixed-methods study based on early adopters of GitHub discussions from January until July 2020. We found that: (1) errors, unexpected behavior, and code reviews are prevalent discussion categories; (2) there is a positive relationship between project member involvement and discussion frequency; (3) developers consider GitHub Discussions useful but face the problem of topic duplication between Discussions and Issues; (4) Discussions play a crucial role in advancing the development of projects; and (5) positive sentiment in Discussions is more frequent than in Stack Overflow posts. Our findings are a first step towards data-informed guidance for using GitHub Discussions, opening up avenues for future work on this novel communication channel.

翻译：GitHub的讨论是GitHub在特定问题或拉动请求之外提问或讨论专题的一个新特点。在2020年12月向所有项目提供之前,它在选定的开放源代码软件项目上进行了测试。为了了解开发商如何使用这一新特点,他们如何看待这一特点,以及它如何影响发展进程,我们根据GitHub从2020年1月至7月讨论的早期采纳者,进行了混合方法研究。我们发现:(1)错误、意外行为和代码审查是普遍的讨论类别;(2)项目成员参与和讨论频率之间存在积极的关系;(3)开发商认为GitHub讨论有用,但面临讨论与问题之间主题重复的问题;(4)讨论在推动项目开发方面发挥着至关重要的作用;(5)讨论的积极情绪比Stack Overproad 员额更为频繁。我们发现,在利用GitHub讨论的数据知情指导方面,我们的调查结果是朝着利用GitHub讨论开辟未来工作途径迈出的第一步。