With {% data variables.product.prodname_discussions %}, the community for your project can create and participate in conversations within the project's repository or organization. Discussions empower a project's maintainers, contributors, and visitors to gather and accomplish the following goals in a central location, without third-party tools.

* Share announcements and information, gather feedback, plan, and make decisions

* Ask questions, discuss and answer the questions, and mark the discussions as answered

* Create polls to gauge community opinion

* Upvote discussions and comments to give higher visibility to ideas you find valuable

* Foster an inviting atmosphere for visitors and contributors to discuss goals, development, administration, and workflows

You might use repository discussions to discuss topics that are specific to the repository. If your project spans multiple repositories, you might use organization discussions to discuss topics that aren't specific to a single repository in your organization.

{% data reusables.discussions.closing-discussions %} For more information, see [Closing a discussion](/discussions/managing-discussions-for-your-community/managing-discussions#closing-a-discussion).

If a repository administrator or project maintainer enables {% data variables.product.prodname_discussions %} for a repository, anyone who has access to the repository can create and participate in discussions for the repository. If an organization owner enables {% data variables.product.prodname_discussions %} for an organization, anyone who can view the source repository can create an organization discussion.

Repository administrators and project maintainers can manage discussions and discussion categories in a repository, and pin discussions to increase the visibility of the discussion. Moderators and collaborators can mark comments as answers, lock discussions, and convert issues to discussions. Similarly, for organization discussions, the role of a user in the source repository determines how a user can interact with organization discussions. For more information, see [AUTOTITLE](/organizations/managing-user-access-to-your-organizations-repositories/managing-repository-roles/repository-roles-for-an-organization).

For more information about management of discussions, see [AUTOTITLE](/discussions/managing-discussions-for-your-community/managing-discussions).

You can create polls in the polls category to gauge interest in new ideas and project direction. Anyone with read access to your repository can create polls, vote in polls, and view their results.{% ifversion fpt or ghec %} Signed out users can view the results of polls in public repositories.{% endif %}

Polls require a question and at least two options. You can add a maximum of eight options and the options can contain a maximum of 128 characters.

Voters cannot change their vote. Editing a poll will reset any votes that have already been cast.

For more information on creating polls, see [AUTOTITLE](/discussions/collaborating-with-your-community-using-discussions/participating-in-a-discussion#creating-a-poll).

You can organize discussions with categories, sections, and labels.

{% data reusables.discussions.you-can-categorize-discussions %} {% data reusables.discussions.about-categories-and-formats %} {% data reusables.discussions.repository-category-limit %}

For discussions with a question/answer format, an individual comment within the discussion can be marked as the discussion's answer. {% data reusables.discussions.github-recognizes-members %}

{% data reusables.discussions.about-announcement-format %}

{% data reusables.discussions.category-sections %}

For more information, see [AUTOTITLE](/discussions/managing-discussions-for-your-community/managing-categories-for-discussions).

{% data reusables.discussions.you-can-label-discussions %}

As a community member or maintainer, start a discussion to ask a question or discuss information that affects the community. For more information, see [AUTOTITLE](/discussions/collaborating-with-your-community-using-discussions/collaborating-with-maintainers-using-discussions).

Participate in a discussion to ask and answer questions, provide feedback, and engage with the project's community. For more information, see [AUTOTITLE](/discussions/collaborating-with-your-community-using-discussions/participating-in-a-discussion).

You can spotlight discussions that contain important, useful, or exemplary conversations among members in the community. For more information, see [AUTOTITLE](/discussions/managing-discussions-for-your-community/managing-discussions#pinning-a-discussion).

{% data reusables.discussions.you-can-convert-an-issue %} For more information, see [AUTOTITLE](/discussions/managing-discussions-for-your-community/moderating-discussions#converting-an-issue-to-a-discussion).

* [AUTOTITLE](/get-started/writing-on-github/getting-started-with-writing-and-formatting-on-github/about-writing-and-formatting-on-github)

* [AUTOTITLE](/search-github/searching-on-github/searching-discussions)

* [AUTOTITLE](/account-and-profile/managing-subscriptions-and-notifications-on-github/setting-up-notifications/about-notifications)

* [AUTOTITLE](/communities/moderating-comments-and-conversations){% ifversion fpt or ghec %}

* [AUTOTITLE](/communities/maintaining-your-safety-on-github){% endif %}

{% data reusables.discussions.github-recognizes-members %} {%- ifversion fpt %} These members appear in a list of the most helpful contributors to the project's discussions, if their privacy settings allow. For more information, see [AUTOTITLE](/account-and-profile/setting-up-and-managing-your-github-profile/customizing-your-profile/setting-your-profile-to-private).{%- endif %}{%- ifversion ghes or ghec %} These members appear in a list of the most helpful contributors to the project's discussions.{%- endif %}

{% data reusables.discussions.you-can-convert-an-issue %} For more information, see [AUTOTITLE](/discussions/managing-discussions-for-your-community/moderating-discussions#converting-an-issue-to-a-discussion).

Each category must have a unique name and emoji pairing, and can be accompanied by a detailed description stating its purpose. Categories help maintainers organize how conversations are filed and are customizable to help distinguish categories that are Q&A or more open-ended conversations. {% data reusables.discussions.repository-category-limit %} For more information, see [AUTOTITLE](/discussions/collaborating-with-your-community-using-discussions/about-discussions#about-categories-and-formats-for-discussions).

{% data reusables.discussions.category-sections %}