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Make it clear that "PENDING" comments have to be submitted #10369
Replies: 164 comments 124 replies
@medallyon - Any chance you would be willing to share what you learned? How do I properly submit my review so that these comments go away? UPDATE: After much looking, I found the place to "Submit" my review on the "files changed" tab in the upper right hand corner. |
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Two years later - I just spent the weekend creating but not submitting responses on a PR I wrote. Everyone was wondering, why I had nothing to say. Very frustrating. |
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I maintain a project for translating game mods. Many users who submit PRs are unfamiliar with GitHub, and some are even unfamiliar with git. There have been many instances where they don't understand the actual meaning of "Pending," and then they ask on Discord, and we have to guide them again. This pending design is so terrible, at least change the wording. |
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Having the ability to batch up draft comment is rally handy, but the UX around how it's done in GitHub is a disaster. Specific suggestion: When a user has unsent comments EVERY place the PR is show to the user should mention that and clicking on that notification should open the "send your comment now" UI. |
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Thank you so much - I had no idea you have to go to "files changed" - this is so obscure. |
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Hey, I know this is years old, but holy crap, this is STILL an issue |
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Having to submit my replies to comments on my own PR is very unintuitive in general. But I agree with the original post, it should be more clear that you're in a 'session' that needs to be closed. |
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just ran into this myself. horrible experience |
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Same, it was pending for a few days and then the person who submitted the pr said he couldn't see it. Definitely needs more clarity. |
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This annoys me so hard every single time. And there isn't even a shortcut to submit. CTRL+Return submits it as |
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Please fix it, I want to reply to other comments without submitting my review yet |
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Whats problem bro ? |
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@Rashidkhan1234567 No one can see your comment until you submit a review of this thread. |
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hello |
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what? |
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Yeah... this is mega confusing for newer GitHub users. Here's an example where a newer user tells me "But Mike, I've reviewed your PR." And except for the "pending" label, it looks like it! Seriously. "Pending" is a poor choice of words. For so many GitHub users, "pending" sounds like legalese. I'd replace "pending" with something like:
Or maybe with an (i) (info) pop-up that says "To share your comments with the author, select Review changes" (or "Finish your review", depending on the status) |
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YESSSSS!! So True! The |
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I totally agree, and IMO "Draft" is the right word to use. With a tooltip explaining what it means! |
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draft would be the PERFECT word to use in this scenario... i don't see why this hasn't been changed yet... |
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Since @github-staff has yet to respond, I've posted a related Tweet: https://twitter.com/TheMikeJang/status/1562789398034276353?s=20&t=Q9Law9XkEM4WagPewd7AaQ |
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Don't post links with trackers ( |
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I've fallen into the same pitfall after a few years not using githuvb reviews 🤦 The Inspiration: the slackbot's |
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Yes! Please let's do this! The current wording with pending is very misleading, as one can interpret it as "a response from the others is pending". And it's totally not clear, that such pending reviews need to be published. |
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Voice of reason here! |
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Sorry guys, I work at GitHub, and yeah - we looked at this the other day and it was just way too sensical and simple of a change. Simple changes like these don't feed our engineering egos - we'll come back to this when we can think of a more complex solution than what we currently have in place. Thank you for your understanding. /s |
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Worse, this thread is what GitHub wakes up to every morning and gets off on. Daily motivation: cruelty is the point. |
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such a freaking flow. If you just press green button "add review comment" doesn't mean you actually make a comment, you have to submit your comment as well... omg ps should I submit something after pressing "answer" button here? |
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Ow please yes, change that to be clear in comments. I requested some reviews, but I didn't realize is marked "Pending". 😄 |
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oh yes |
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Happened to me as well, I replied to the reviews and after many days the maintainer made me realize that my comments are PENDING and not even visible to them. Really bad design, Github should definitely make it more intuitive |
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Yep that just got me too. Here I was wondering why my colleagues hadn't addressed my comments ... because of course they hadn't seen them. Yet another way I dislike Github's PR experience 😡 |
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I just realized it today after 2 months of being neglected of the reviews... |
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yes, I meet it |
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This is just incredible... |
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The first time it happened to me, my teammate had to message me that he didn't see my comments on his PR. (I was glad I told him I wrote some comments, or I wouldn't have figured it out.) And sometimes my comments would become outdated by the time they are submitted, because the user had already updated the code. |
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Same happens to me.. |
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Bump for the stupid people at Github |
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Bumps won't help, they unsubscribed from the notifications |
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They might have a PR for it, that is "Pending" review by the maintainer 😆 |
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bump, 5 years later, this still feels like bad UI |
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This still is bad UI. |
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In order to reply to other people's comments on my own PR, I needed to hunt down this button, which took an embarrassingly long time since I was in the Conversation tab, which doesn't have an entry point for this UI. Clicking the comment button should just submit the comment. What problem is GitHub is trying to solve with this two-stage, find-the-hidden-button workflow? 
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Thanks to this thread I quickly saw what the issue was. I was also confused by the "pending" tag and saw no place where I can actually submit the comment. This thread is now at least so popular, that it's pretty easy to find the "solution" 🥇 |
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It's pretty intuitive once you get used to it. The problem is that I've had it happen maybe a half dozen times where I have ask someone to review my pull request multiple times and just get a thumbs up emoji after multiple days of pinging and then they finally realize that they just never published anything in the first place. |
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I actually like the workflow, it's just way to easy to forget to send comments and way to hard to find/send unsent comments when you remember to worry about it. |
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Since we're not getting any traction on this issue, maybe we need to take a targeted approach instead... request specific workflow features to improve the experience, such as making it easier to locate unsent comments, as you've described here etc? |
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Bump for the stupid people at @github |
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They unsubscribed. |
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No, they probably left all their replies with PENDING status. 🙄 |
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This is really confusing, I hope it will be fixed at some point. Stumbled upon this issue just recently, I had no idea that the comments weren't yet accessible by other Reviewers in the PR. It really sucks especially when there is no explanation of the "Pending" state (e.g a tooltip that says that you need still a submission). |
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I was going mad for a week just to realise that I fell into this trap again... absolutely stupid and nobody from GitHub/M$ cares about this after more than 4 years! |
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omg, please, fix this UI issue. These "pending" labels are very confusing. Add something like "not visible until you submit your review" or something to the comment block indicating that pending comments are kind like a draft. |
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It's especially confusing for a non-native speaker, isn't it?) |
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Just change the string from "PENDING" to "UNSUBMITTED", please. |
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+1 for this simple change; this being intuitive "once you get used to it" seems like a very lazy excuse for poor UI design |
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+1 for this being confusing. If someone has left a comment on my PR and I respond to that comment by clicking the "reply" button underneath their comment, then I would expect them to be able to see the comment I have made straight away. Even just changing the wording from pending to unsubmitted would help. |
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Similar frustrating experience for me. |
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+1 Claude told me this while I was making a bot to fetch Github PR comments. This is mega confusing, I don't know how many comments I have made without submitting review before. |
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I tripped on this last week, and realized that no one saw my comments today. Really frustrating. There should be a button right at the comment to submit it (and all other pending comments with it). |
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It just took me 2 months to figure out that the big, yellow "PENDING" decorator on my comments does NOT mean:
"Your comment is pending to be reviewed by the maintainer."
But it actually means:
"You haven't submitted your comment (along with your review)."
It took me some additional days to figure out how to "submit" the review. I was merely commenting on a review that the maintainer had already started and expected those comments to appear on the reviewer's end as soon as I clicked on "Comment".
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