Review the labelling system we use across our repos

[kellylee-gds]

What

We currently have 137 labels in use across our repositories. However we are aware of some known issues with this labelling system which can be resolved by reviewing the system.

Why

Known issues:

• we're not applying labels consistently when creating issues
• the large number of labels makes it difficult to search for the ones you need
• pertinent labels are often presented from the perspective of a user (ie: if I'm updating documentation, I want to use the documentation label, but it's described as "user asks for documentation", so it's unclear if I should).
• they are applied inconsistently across our repositories (eg a label is created in govuk-design-system but not design-system-team-internal or govuk-frontend)
• there is no oversight or process to follow when creating labels, and they are used for personal issue management rather than team
• the labels repo is not used when adding labels resulting in the source code consistently being out of date
• not all labels have descriptions which makes it difficult to identify the labels purpose
• we're not using the currently labelling system for data analysis as originally intended

Who needs to work on this

Kelly, Romaric

Who needs to review this

The team

Done when

• explored what potential uses there are for labels
• identified which uses cases are possible and practical from a capacity and skillset perspective
• agreed on a proposal to be reviewed by the team
• feedback collected from the team and analysed
• documented our decision making rationale and addressed each pain point
• updated labelling system

[domoscargin]

An issue I've found (other than not being able to find the right labels) is that pertinent labels are often presented from the perspective of a user (ie: if I'm updating documentation, I want to use the documentation label, but it's described as "user asks for documentation", so it's unclear if I should).

[kellylee-gds]

Thanks @domoscargin — I'll add that to the list!

[querkmachine]

For what it's worth, I find the labels to mostly be quite helpful, especially when it comes to searching the backlog of issues, such as if I'm looking for work to pick up, or trying to see if an issue with a component or pattern has previously been reported. Having the labels all be the same across repos makes doing that a lot easier.

GitHub has also recently (or is in the process of?) rolling out a UI change that makes label descriptions more prominent than they used to be, so hopefully their usage gets a bit more consistent or intentioned because of that.

An issue I do have is with the current names of some labels being quite vague. We have a colour-coding system to differentiate between styles, components and patterns, but other than that we have some fairly similar label names ("date input" the component vs. "dates" the pattern, "password input" vs. "passwords", the five different accessibility labels, etc.)