Spring Cleaning

Spring is in the air. At GitHub we’re busting out the mops and hosing down the site.

Today we’re removing two features. They’ve been gathering dust for a while and it’s time to throw them out.

Fork Queue

When the Fork Queue launched it was a game changer. Finally you could accept contributions to your code right on GitHub with the click of a button. Or really, a few clicks. But still! It was awesome. I used the Fork Queue all the time.

But then, one year ago, the Merge Button launched. While the Fork Queue let you cherry pick individual changes, the Merge Button lets you merge an entire branch. It’s also built right into Pull Requests, giving you a great place to discuss the changes before accepting them.

Pull Requests are the future and the Fork Queue is the past. Today we’re officially removing it from the site.

Private Messaging

The Fork Queue was a stepping stone towards a bigger and better feature. Private Messaging, however, was a step backwards: nobody wants another inbox. And a sub-par one, at that. Email is still the best way to contact someone.

Today we’re removing Private Messaging from GitHub. If you want people to contact you, please provide a public email address for your profile.

Onward

It’s never easy removing features, but we want to always be improving GitHub and this is sometimes part of it.

Thanks to the Fork Queue and Private Messaging for their years of service.

Written by

Chris Wanstrath

@defunkt