Make it clear that "PENDING" comments have to be submitted

[medallyon]

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".

See the following:

[stpaultim]

It took me some additional days to figure out how to "submit" the review.

@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.

[fahim-oncorps]

this is completely woooowful

[egouldo]

I'm still a little confused. So if I have pending suggestions / comments, when I submit my review, should I choose 'comment', 'approve' or 'request changes' ?

[larryrivera-ca]

terrible wth

[reeses1]

Chiming in. This resulted in a change request going unnoticed followed by a code merge. Meanwhile I'm staring at the comment completely perplexed as to how it got missed. Thanks to folks who investigated this -- definitely could use improvement.

[Roldanlautaro]

wow

[ghost]

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.

[uchagani]

just ran into this myself. horrible experience

[MichaelHeinzman]

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.

[Marenz]

This annoys me so hard every single time. And there isn't even a shortcut to submit. CTRL+Return submits it as Pending comment, too, starting a review. ON MY OWN PR.

[kamkry]

Please fix it, I want to reply to other comments without submitting my review yet

[Rashidkhan1234567]

Whats problem bro ?

[PetrGlad]

@Rashidkhan1234567 No one can see your comment until you submit a review of this thread.

[mjang]

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:

• "not yet submitted"
• "draft"

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)

[ailinz22]

YESSSSS!! So True! The pending is so misleading that I thought it was pending because the commenter hasn't viewed my new response yet...I thought it would be automatically changed after he read my reply...

[pantherdd]

I totally agree, and IMO "Draft" is the right word to use. With a tooltip explaining what it means!

[NovaAndrom3da]

draft would be the PERFECT word to use in this scenario... i don't see why this hasn't been changed yet...

[mjang]

Since @github-staff has yet to respond, I've posted a related Tweet: https://twitter.com/TheMikeJang/status/1562789398034276353?s=20&t=Q9Law9XkEM4WagPewd7AaQ

[vpithart]

I've fallen into the same pitfall after a few years not using githuvb reviews 🤦 The pending word feels really misleading.

Inspiration: the slackbot's only visible to you would be by far easier to grasp for first-time users.

[GollyTicker]

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.

[dganzella]

Voice of reason here!

[rollSUgrem]

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?

[thomasbnt]

Ow please yes, change that to be clear in comments. I requested some reviews, but I didn't realize is marked "Pending". 😄

[njmulsqb]

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

[tonesandtones]

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 😡

[zyiyi11]

I just realized it today after 2 months of being neglected of the reviews...

[laglangyue]

yes, I meet it

[oviliz]

This is just incredible...

[melvic-ybanez]

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.

[suyj-git]

Same happens to me..

[bpaw-as]

Commenting to increase how ratio'ed github is getting with this unintuitive change

[devmi]

Suggestions

When answering to a single PR comment on my own PR, I would expect that the action button was not Add review comment, but something like Add single comment or even more familiar, Reply now.

Alternatively, Github UX could provide two choices (besides Cancel), such as

1. Save unpublished reply as secondary button with tooltip saying Finish your review to publish it, instead of the current primary button Add review comment;
2. Reply now, which would internally trigger the finish the review action too, like an Add single comment.

Here is a mockup:

[HarmonyMorse]

2.5 years later and people are still having this issue... please just change it already, GitHub

[LJBL22]

it took me 10 mins to figure, and still asked another senior to help me to point it out...

All in all, it's a sweet function just a little bit too hard to find the button :')

[tsoj]

Yeah the same thing happened to me. I would have never found out if I didn't have the habit of checking everything I submit on the internet in a private/icognito browser window.

[nerdCopter]

DRAFT
943 days since ticket opened, how hard is this?

[FocusriteMGreenwood]

Just came across this myself. It almost caused a PR to be merged without significant issues being addressed.

Dear GutHub. Wording matters. Whatever "Pending" means in your heads is not what it means to a majority of your users. This is a very poor choice of words and there are plenty of better suggestions in this report. Just pick one that makes it clear the comment has not yet been submitted, because most people seem to assume that once you finish editing the comment that it has been submitted. The final step where you have to "add your review" is really not at all clear.

[ivandres73]

Ran into this today, because my comment was not visible a PR was merged introducing a bug to the main branch.
The problem is not how it works, is the text "Pending". When I saw my comment was "pending" I assumed it meant: "it is pending to be addressed by the PR author".

Just change the text! that shouldn't be super hard, is a label!

[NovaAndrom3da]

This is a one-line fix, how hard could it possibly be to fix this to both A) ease tensions from your users and B) prevent this issue from arising with hundreds of future users? It's been years, I'm certain anyone in this thread could've fixed this in a tiny fraction of that time. It would take maybe 5 minutes, at most.

[tsoj]

I have the suspicion that the github team just forgot about this.

[Radivarig]

They didn't forget, they commented but didn't submit it.

[krupenkov-e]

Guys, be patient. Github is a small indie company, they neither can address every little(or major) issue quickly nor afford a decent UI/UX designer. One day they'll fix it

[FocusriteMGreenwood]

GitHub is owned by Microsoft! Hardly a small indie company :D

[nobody0]

GitHub is owned by Microsoft! Hardly a small indie company :D

MICRO soft, its such a small company, they even put it in the name

[izmyname]

Well, good to see I'm not the only who got into this silly situation.

[dganzella]

seriously, fuck this shit, almost went through a shitstorm here because things were taking weeks to be reviewed

also why the fuck some things become pending and others do not?

my brothers in christ, what the hellllll, I dont care about your fucked up process, do whatever shit you want, but for fucks sake, do like any other fucking software or social network and straight up just write in giant letters

"ONLY VISIBLE TO YOU"

[HarmonyMorse]

Seriously. Like "pending" can mean so many different things. Just make it clear.. please

cries in the corner

[ik-ivanov]

Just went trough the same ordeal. Boy, this was mighty confusing! 😢

[nerdCopter]

I've decided this is a bug 😉
https://support.github.com/request >> bug report or other support >

Product

GitHub

Description

This subject seems to have been overlooked or ignored and needs attention:

    https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/10369
    PENDING is 100% unclear. Please consider replacing the text with DRAFT or some other pertinent terminology.
    It is not 100% clear that one must "finish" a review.

Reproduction Steps

    Click the "+" icon/button on any code of any PR.
    make any comment
    Click Add single comment or Start a review.
    Do not click Review changes, do not click request changes, approve nor comment.

The unfinished review shows PENDING, which is not 100% clear to user and hidden to every other user/maintainer.

Fault Type

Permanent - Occurring repeatably

Blocking?

No

Last working date

Logs

Maybe you all have decided the same 😉

[dganzella]

Thanks! Hopefully they change it.
I mean we are vaccinated against this issue already, but will help people in the future

[HarmonyMorse]

It certainly blocked me when my comments weren't getting reviewed by team members.

[nerdCopter]

dead-end; circular.

screencap

[ICEknigh7]

Maybe tell Rocky that it doesn't matter if it's intended when it's a problem.

[nerdCopter]

my reply was blocked due to ticket closed. ☹️

[szalapski]

It just seems so obvious that the point of comments is to be seen. The price of showing your comment a little too eagerly IS NOTHING compared to the price of never seeing the comment at all. This isn't a poker game--we can show our hands to each other. Let us get rid of the "Pending" status altogether (in a repo-wide or org-wide setting if you must). It's that easy!

Please let me reiterate: no other code review tool does it this way and it is the most astonishing design decision that keeps biting us over and over again.