Github now allows repository owners to delete an issue: curse or a boon?

Deleting files

2 min read

On Saturday Github released the public beta version for a new feature to delete issues. This feature lets repository admins, delete an issue from any repository, permanently. This might give more power to the repository owners now.

Since the time Github tweeted about this news, the controversy around this feature seems to be on fire. According to many, this new feature might lead to the removal of issues that disclose severe security issues. Also, many users can take help of the closed issue and resolve their problems as the conversation history of repository sometimes has a lot of information.

In case, someone posts a security vulnerability publicly as an issue, it might turn out to be a big problem to the project owner, as there’s a high possibility of people avoiding the future updates coming on the same project. This feature could be helpful to many organizations, as this feature might work as a damage control for them. Few of the issues posted by users on Github aren’t really issues, so this feature might be helpful in that direction. Also, there are a lot of duplicate issues which get posted on purpose or mistakenly by the users, so this feature could work a rescue tool!

In contrast to this, a lot of users are opposing this feature. This feature might not be so helpful because no matter how fast one erases a vulnerability report, the info gets leaked via the mail inbox. The poll posted by one of the users on Twitter which has 71 votes as of the time of writing, shows that 69% of the participants disliked this feature. While only 14% of users have given a thumbs up to this feature. And the rest 17% have no views on it. The poll is still on, it would be interesting to see the final report of the same.

The users are requesting for a better option which might just highlight a way to report security issues in a non-public way. While few others prefer an archive option instead of deleting the issue permanently. And some others just strongly favor removing the feature.

With many users now blaming Microsoft for this feature on Github, it would be interesting to see the next update on the same feature, could it possibly just be an UNDO option?

Read more about this news on Github’s official Twitter page.