Process clarification regarding branches, merge requests

[Aaron Hill]

I should state that I only have experience with GitHub, so I might mix 
up terminology when trying to map things to GitLab.

Is there a preference whether development branches should be created on 
the repository itself versus a forked copy?  What I am used to on GitHub 
is working from my own fork, creating branches as needed, and then 
submitting a pull request that can be merged when validated and 
approved.  I see some merge requests for the project are coming from 
branches within the origin repository.  Is this a policy thing or 
something where GitLab just fundamentally works differently than GitHub?


-- Aaron Hill