Summing-up the month of 'What the heck?!'

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A month ago, I wrote a blog post, starting our first month of “What the heck?!” (WTH) ever! An experiment and without any expectations, as we have never had done something like this before. But WTH, why not 😁

And today, I think we can actually say: All good things come to an end.

It has been an amazing month! A whopping 746 topics have been created in the WTH forum, that together collected over 4.500 posts. The contents of all these created topics are amazing! And apparently, you all agreed on that, as a stunning 2.600 likes have been given on all those posts.

About the content, it is amazing! There was some really good feedback in there. Annoyances made many people think: “Yeah! What the heck?!” and more importantly, developers chimed in as well!

Developers dived in and started resolving and fixing stuff! At the moment of writing, a whopping 68 pull requests with code changes to address those WTHs have been made. A lot of these are already shipped with the 0.115 birthday release.

So, what was fixed?

Let’s take a quick peek at stuff that was reported and fixed/addressed/improved (in no particular order):

This list isn’t even complete, but gives a nice idea of what when on. We think it is an impressive accomplishment. If you are a bit into GitHub, you can find all pull requests made for the month of WTH, as they are all labeled with “WTH”.

Closing the WTH forum & Hacktoberfest

As said, all good things come to an end. We are going to close the WTH forum. This means that no new WTH topics can be created, but everything will remain visible.

Hacktoberfest is right around the corner and all current data in that forum can really help drive it. It is a great resource for developers to find opportunities to contribute on during the October month. So, while we close it down, we hope more will be addressed.

Why not run this WTH all the time? Well, it looses its power over time. This is already visible right now when comparing the velocity at the beginning and end of the month.

However, let’s see if we can do it again next year. Maybe, we should combine it with Hacktoberfest in 2021?

How did you experience the month of WTH? Should we do it again?

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2020/09/19/summing-up-the-month-of-what-the-heck/
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So, should we do this again next year?

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Yes. Absolutely, yes.

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Yes my dude. Birthday mega hacktoberfest wtf month every year.

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W[hy]TH not?

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…yes sir!

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I hope that top-voted not-fixed (yet) WTH with ‘last changed state’ will live it’s life in minds of someone to finnaly come out with solutiion in HA…

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I love the idea of doing this on a yearly basis.

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Lol. Do you really expect anyone to answer no to that question?

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Doesn’t hurt to ask

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Combine it with Hacktoberfest and the goal is to crash github.

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I think it works well to setup for hacktoberfest.

Having WTH a month or 2 before hacktoberfest gives a nice fresh shopping list of quirks and quibbles to put in the list of other items.

I was amazed at how quickly some of these items were getting turned around!

Fantastic community effort.

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What’s the status of the Feature Requests section?

It predates WTH and has always served as a place where people express their “WTH” by suggesting new and improved ways of doing things.

More importantly, what is the magic that drew developers to address issues raised in WTH but Feature Requests is, comparatively speaking, ignored? Was it the more prominent marketing of the ‘limited time offer’ of WTH? Whatever it was, Feature Requests could benefit from the same treatment. There are many excellent WTH’s languishing in there.

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As explained in the original start post, WTH and feature request are not the same. Sure they have overlap.

Feature requests are a great source of inspiration as well, as a developer, I use it quite a bit a actually.

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I think that one is not solvable at this point in time. How easy the idea may sound, I can assure you that addressing that WTH is another cookie.

However, please read the FAQ on the WTH; as votes may help with attention of an WTH, it doesn’t have to be picked up.

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Rofl well, as yes or no answer may work. But some additional context on why a yes or no is always nice.

For example, maybe you have an idea on how we could improve the WTH? Or maybe telling what you particuallarly like or disliked this edition.

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Yeah maybe, that is what we are going to find out now I guess… One advantage of doing the WTH during Hacktoberfest, is to get a better/more dynamic interaction between developers and WTH reporters in the same month.

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I guess to put it simply, WTH was a very direct way of asking your customer base what the want to see. And then you want on and proved that it wasn’t just lip service by actually fixing their gripes. It was refreshing to see that from a project.

And I do agree with another commenter, in that I believe you should hold the WTH fore hacktoberfest. That gives people time to flesh out the votes before the developers get started on stuff. It might be worthwhile to have a system where people can reopen the forum topics during hacktoberfest to reopen the dialog with the devs.

Honestly, I can’t think of much to improve on the process. It was awesome. But you guys have made so many right decisions I would trust your judgement if you decided to hold both at the same time. Go with your gut.

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Well, we thought of that. The forums is closed for new WTH suggestions. But existing WTH topics can still be replied on and being discussed. This is especially helpful for things being addressed in the future (e.g., Hacktoberfest) or still in progress.

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Absolutely AMAZING work here guys, thank you so much for such an amazingly powerful home automation tool! It’s been such a fun year since I discovered HA :heart_eyes: