When questions and defects have different homes, the issue chooser says so
A project that opens a discussion forum and then leaves the issue chooser silent has two channels and one visible door. Every question still arrives as an issue, and the forum stays empty while the tracker stays noisy.
Observable check
where the project runs a public non-defect channel such as GitHub Discussions, a forum, or a mailing list, .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/config.yml names it under contact_links with a URL that resolves. A project running no such channel falls outside this rule.
Where this comes from
- https://docs.github.com/en/communities/using-templates-to-encourage-useful-issues-and-pull-requests/configuring-issue-templates-for-your-repository
- https://docs.github.com/en/discussions/guides/best-practices-for-community-conversations-on-github
Last read against these sources on 2026-07-28.
The first page documents contact_links in .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/config.yml as the mechanism that adds a destination to the chooser, and blank_issues_enabled as the separate switch this rule deliberately leaves alone. The second is GitHub's own case for keeping open-ended conversation out of the tracker, which is why the rule fires only where a second channel already exists: whether to run one is the project's decision, and this rule scores only whether the chooser admits it. The check reads the linked URL because a contact_links entry pointing at a forum nobody opened is the failure the rule exists to catch, and nothing in the file distinguishes it from a working one.