Streamlining GitHub Statistics: Addressing Project Issue Misdirection

In the world of developer productivity, accurate tracking and reliable data are paramount for understanding workflow efficiency and maintaining robust GitHub statistics. A recent discussion in the GitHub Community highlights a critical bug within GitHub Projects that directly impacts this, causing issues to be created in the wrong repositories and, in some cases, vanish entirely. This isn't just a minor inconvenience; it's a significant UI/UX flaw that can skew your productivity KPI metrics and disrupt agile workflows.

The Core Problem: A UI/UX Conundrum

The Bug Report

The issue, reported by cmrn-rhi, details a frustrating experience within a GitHub Project configured to pull issues from multiple repositories and grouped by repository. When attempting to create a new issue for a specific repository, such as repo:pathogen-genomics-package, the "Create new issue" pop-up silently shifts its target. The user observed that the pop-up's header would change to "Create new issue in GenEpiO/genepio," implying the issue would be created in a different, unintended repository (repo:genepio). To compound the problem, some issues intended for the genepio repository would simply disappear after creation, never appearing in any repository.

Initial Troubleshooting

Early suggestions, like those from Tamanna-Sharma8, often point to user error—incorrect repository selection, misconfigured automation, or issues stemming from working within a fork. While these are valid considerations for general issue creation problems, the specifics of this bug suggest a deeper system-level flaw.

The Expert Perspective: More Than User Error

As healer0805 astutely points out, this is almost certainly a UI state / context-switching bug. The core problem appears to be that when the "Create new issue" modal opens within a Project view grouped by repository, it silently switches its target repository based on the project’s auto-pull rules. This means:

• The modal's header updates to a different repository than where the action was initiated, without explicit user interaction or confirmation.
• There's no visual cue or guardrail to alert the user that the target repository has changed.
• When issue creation fails (e.g., due to a mismatch between the intended and actual target repository), the issue simply vanishes, offering no error message or feedback.

This behavior is particularly dangerous. It misleads developers into believing they are performing an action in one context while the system silently executes it in another. Such discrepancies can severely impact the reliability of GitHub statistics and make it difficult to track progress, thus hindering efforts to monitor productivity KPI metrics effectively.

Impact on Developer Productivity and Agile Workflows

For teams relying on GitHub Projects to manage complex, multi-repository initiatives, this bug introduces significant friction. Lost issues mean wasted time, duplicated effort, and a breakdown in communication. It directly undermines the transparency and efficiency that an agile KPI dashboard aims to provide, making it harder to get accurate insights into team performance and project status.

Proposed Solutions and Best Practices

To mitigate this critical bug, healer0805 suggests several key improvements:

• Lock Repository Context: The modal should lock the target repository based on where the "add issue" action was initiated.
• Explicit Confirmation: If the target repository must change for some reason, the user should be forced to explicitly confirm the new target.
• Surface Errors: Instead of silently dropping failed issue creations, the system should provide clear error messages.

In the meantime, users of GitHub Projects should exercise extreme vigilance when creating new issues, always double-checking the repository name in the "Create new issue" pop-up header before submission. This careful approach can help prevent issues from being misdirected or lost.

Ultimately, this discussion underscores the importance of robust UI/UX design in developer tools. When core functionalities like issue creation are ambiguous or prone to silent failures, it erodes trust and significantly hampers developer productivity. Addressing such bugs is crucial for maintaining the integrity of project management and the accuracy of vital github statistics.