CONTRIBUTING.md should be included, not linked, on the "New Issue" page and others

[stuartpb]

When creating a new issue or patch, GitHub includes a note at the top of the page if the repo contains a CONTRIBUTING file:

Please review the guidelines for contributing to this repository.

GitHub should include the content of CONTRIBUTING.whatever on the "New issue" page, beneath the entry box, akin to the way it displays README.md on the main repository pages. (The link at the top would then be to that content, via an element ID like "#readme" on main pages.)

This makes it much more likely that users actually will read the guidelines, and will be especially useful in the patch submission for content repos like opensets/domainprofiles where the guidelines contain a base template for files.

[gordonwoodhull]

+1

I think people must think it's only for pull requests, and even for PRs, I find most people haven't read it.

[stuartpb]

On 1/8/2015 4:07 AM, James Dennes (GitHub Staff) wrote:

Hey Stuart,

GitHub should include the content of CONTRIBUTING.whatever on the "New issue" page, beneath the entry box

Thanks for the feedback. I'll add your suggestion to our internal Feature Request List for consideration in future. No promises if we may change this, however we definitely appreciate the feedback.

Thanks,
James

[stuartpb]

I was fed up enough with this that I wrote a userscript to fix it (even if only for myself): https://ghes.github.io/contributing-includer/contributing.user.js

[embray]

👍

[stuartpb]

Some notes from the implementation of that userscript:

• CONTRIBUTING.md should also be included (not linked as it is now) on the "compare" page's Pull Request form, although maybe higher than the bottom (where the userscript currently puts it).
• CONTRIBUTING.md would be at least, if not more, useful if it were also included in the file editor (including the file creator). I've included it as part of the userscript. The userscript doesn't add a warning link of the type seen on the issues and PR creation page, for a couple reasons, but doing so may be a sensible accompaniment to adding it to these pages.

[cvrebert]

A slight variation on this is one of the features requested in https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github