Comment by timv

But the big thing that GitHub doesn't use GitHub for is interacting with the masses.

- GitHub doesn't use GitHub issues to take feature requests or bug reports.

- GitHub doesn't use Pull Requests to allow users to submit bug fixes

When all your issues and pull-request are being raised by a defined set of people who are (or ought to be) committed to the same collective goal (because they're employees of the same company) you can develop a culture and norms around how those things work.

If "Some Guy" at GitHub raises issues where the only description is "This feature doesn't work on Mac" or raises PRs where the only description is "this fixes a bug I found" the cultural pressure would teach him/her that's not how things are done, and if the lesson wasn't learned, then they wouldn't last at GitHub.

When the people you're interacting with are infrequent contributors, it's a different scenario. They need guidance. They need to be pushed to go down the helpful path on their first attempt, because there are too many new contributors and they often don't stick around for long enough to change behaviours by osmosis and cultural pressure.