Add Issue Template

[FireController1847]

It should help new users out with being able to report issue and give us some organization.

I'd love to add in the comments of the template links to guides on how to get the output log and savegame, if there are any.

You can see an example of this working if you head over to FireController1847/Cities-Skylines-Traffic-Manager-President-Edition#issues and create a new issue.

Also, I'd be up to make a template for feature requests too, if that floats your boat. We can make other templates for other things as well :)

[originalfoo]

Yes, this is a great idea!!!

Reviewing....

[originalfoo]

@FireController1847 : Although it looks really nice once the issue is submitted, I think currently the text in the new issue form is too much, especially with all that markdown syntax.

Maybe something simpler like:

## Describe problem

Type here

## Link to savegame

Paste URL here

<!-- How to share savegame? See: https://bit.ly/2FXog0z -->

## Link to log file

Paste URL here 

<!-- How to share log file? See: https://bit.ly/2I3YVFL -->

## Sceenshots

Optional: Paste URLs here

<!-- How to share screenshots? See: https://bit.ly/2Kc8owO -->

## Additional information

Provide any other information / links here

While it might result in a bit of visible boilerplate landing in the issue, I think it will be much easier for users to work with, What do you think?

[originalfoo]

Also, could you add one for feature requests? Maybe something like:

## Describe your idea:

Type here

## Any links with additional information?

Paste URLs here

## Sceenshots illustrating how it works?

Optional: Paste URLs here

<!-- How to share screenshots? See: https://bit.ly/2Kc8owO -->

## Additional information:

Provide any other information / links here

[originalfoo]

And one for translations?

Looking for file format information? See: https://bit.ly/2FVUglO

## Which language?

Type here

## Localisation file

If you're familiar with GitHub you can send us a Pull Request. (recommended)

Or, click on a *blank line* in this text box and then drag-and-drop the files to directly upload them.

Or, paste a URL to the file here

## Additional information:

Provide any other information / links here

Note: I have no clue how the localisation stuff works - I'll need help with the following wiki page: https://bit.ly/2FVUglO

[FireController1847]

When I get back home I'll take a look at making some changes and adding more templates.

[originalfoo]

I found info on the localisation stuff so updated that wiki page myself; if someone could check over it:

https://github.com/krzychu124/Cities-Skylines-Traffic-Manager-President-Edition/wiki/Localisation

[originalfoo]

I think there's still too much markdown, and also having the basic instructional text in html comments is confusing. I think its OK for the subsequent "how to" text (eg, see my examples above) as there the comment sort of separates it out, making it look more like a quote or note from user perspective.

[FireController1847]

@aubergine10 Question: In particular is it the example? The comments below each topic make sense, imho, even if they're somewhat in markdown. It explains what to put there, so the user knows exactly what we're looking for. However, I can see how the example could confuse people.

[originalfoo]

Yeah, the example just adds a lot of clutter; if an example is required to show people how to use a form, the form design is wrong.

As for the comments below headings in the main part of the content, IMO the html comment tag is confusing; it's not bringing any benefit to the user, it's just adding clutter. It would be better to remove the html comment tag, even if that risks instructional text appearing in final issue once submitted.

[FireController1847]

Okay, I think I've gotchya. Give me a couple minutes and I'll make these template issues great again.

[FireController1847]

@aubergine10 Okay, so I cut down on the comments massively and added labels. How this?

[originalfoo]

@FireController1847 did you push your additional changes? I see lots of "Pending" flags on the comments above but no subsequent changes?

[FireController1847]

@aubergine10 I committed a bunch after my initial comment "I think I've gotchya," implementing said changes.

[originalfoo]

In the early days of the internet, search engines looked like this:

And everyone was generally confused because they were presented with all kinds of stuff that was superfluous to their requirement to just search the internet.

Then google came along and said "people just want the search box" and made a search engine that looks like this:

And everyone started using it because it didn't throw the kitchen sink at them.

Then Microsoft came along with Bing, which is arguably a better search engine than google, but they made it look like this:

So everyone still uses google because it doesn't throw the kitchen sink at them.

The same happened with mobile phones. They used to have clunky interfaces that showed too much, then Apple came along and simplified it with a touch screen. Everyone who could afford it ditched their Nokias and similar devices and moved over to Apple because Apple was easier to use. Google clocked on pronto, and made their OS super clean too (material) - in fact, cleaner than Apple in most cases, and cheaper too. So now most people are moving over to Android because it's cleaner, easier and cheaper.

All of these transitions have something in common: Minimalist Gestalt

Instead of more is more, minimalist gestalt teaches that less is more.

Put another way:

When everything has focus, nothing does

This is what I've been trying to convey in the reviews of this PR.

There are actually hundreds of gestalt principles, but most people focus on 7 main principles.

Gestalt is just one piece of the mix, it focuses on the visual psychology. It's also important to reduce friction in general, which is why I posted the link to Flywheels, kinetic energy, and friction, an article which caused a seismic shift (or more acutely, a gestalt shift) in UX thinking when it was published.

These things apply to all software and even hardware - anything that has to interact with humans.

If something needs a link to an example showing how to do it, it is designed wrong. If a user wants to perform a task, like report a bug, that has to be the absolute primary focus of the interface.

If we start asking them to do a bunch of stuff they don't want to do, or start putting hurdles in their way, they will leave and not report the bug - they don't want the kitchen sink thrown at them.

Make sense?

[FireController1847]

@aubergine10 Yes, and I understand what you are talking about (I've taken a Digital Media Design college class). However, in this situation it has been simplified greatly. Every item is to the point, and does not contain unnecessary instruction. In fact, the only thing that still could be considered "too much" here would be the "replace me" things. However, those are placeholders, NOT instructions.

Some people learn best by example -- not to say that they need to learn how to do it, but most people aren't smart enough to figure a lot of this out. No matter how simple it is, I would still provide an example on how to do it, because that's how I've always understood to do things. I'm not saying everyone has to read about the example; let alone go to the URL. You know that won't happen. But I want the option to be there for people to know how to do it.

Not to say I won't disagree it's a little much in terms of the instructions (placeholders), people are just not smart enough to be able to figure out what to put there. That's why I provide the instruction for (almost) every comment; people WILL do it wrong if we don't tell them how to do it, no matter what. In this situation, I'd assume you're meaning it's a little complex for the user's to figure out why there's need for the "replace me" instructions. I don't know how much more simplistic I can make it without outright removing them (and when I do that, people are not smart and often don't put it in the right spot). "R E P L A C E M E" is direct instruction on exactly what to do. This is not UX design, nor is this UI design. This is a textbox that people are typing in. They need to know what we're asking for and where to put it. That's what I have provided with these templates.

The whole template is extremely simplistic; the required ones simply state what to do, and we need to tell the user that the other ones are OPTIONAL (they often can't make that inference on their own). I think we're both going for the same goal, but with different outlooks. You're focusing on "bad UX design," and I'm focusing on "there's only so much 'design' we can put in text."

Additionally, people like to know why they need to go through the work of listing their mods or putting in things like their output log. That's the main reason I have the explanation: is for if users need to understand WHY they should go through the effort. Without those, people will likely skip important information needed to figure out what the bug is. Listing mods is an important aspect when reporting a bug. If they can't list the mods they had enabled, why should we immediately assume it was TM:PE's fault? Same with me asking them to disable all mods and see if it happens with only TM:PE. I'm eliminating things we'd have to repeat and say over and over after they've made the issues and instead putting an, extremely simplistic at this point mind you, one-line sentence explaining three things: why they need it, how to do it, and where to put it. That's it. Each sentence is explaining those things, in one line.

Google's search engine is not text-based. And, it's a poor example. "Search" is a one-word term that actually DOES show up within the search box. They have a UI that can symbolize where to move the cursor to type, and they can use colors, icons, and shadows to guide the user where to go. We don't have that luxury here. We have to base it entirely off text. So, all the instruction that would get guided by UI needs to be converted to text. This is as simplistic as I can make it.

Sorry if I repeated myself. I just don't understand how what I have now is still too complex for a text-based user-input box without any UI or UX and requires a lot of information to ensure we get a proper bug instead of a waste of time and space.

[krzychu124]

@FireController1847 Maybe you didn't noticed but now we can set up multiple custom templates, not just one.
Quick example below how it looks when user clicked New issue button - Angular repo:

As you can see there we have multiple options so maybe split and save every paragraph to different file and add multiple templates?

[FireController1847]

@krzychu124 We've added three in this PR; one for. Bug Reports, one for Feature Requests, and one for Translation Submissions. What other categories would you suggest?

[FireController1847]

@krzychu124 My apologies, I had forgotten to merge my branch into master so you could see it working. Now if you go to my branch and create a new issue, you should see it in action.

[krzychu124]

Finally, I found some time 😉

I think there is too much text to remove (marked as optional), especially when it comes to bug report template.
It doesn't have to be beautiful, If someone wants to style his text, there is a little link down below to open up styling manual (icon with M),

I mean imagine that someone doesn't remove those instructions. (People are generally lazy)
That will end up with digging through that pile of text to find out what he/she wrote...

Personally I would add one link to properly created issue at the first line (as comment).

Remember this is an issue template not user manual describing how to do that. It should speed up process of issue creation and nothing more, I think.

[FireController1847]

@aubergine10 @krzychu124 Alright, fine. I've taken your approach. Do you think this will work?

[originalfoo]

Simplify Extremist

Will check in a moment, just sorting another PR

[originalfoo]

LGTM! 👍

[krzychu124]

LGTM! 👍

[originalfoo]

I've updated the links in the wiki so they now use the new issue templates :)

[krzychu124]

How nice that automatically GitHub set up everything for us 😄