I think that the stars vs followers update was far from useless. That improvement was absolutely fantastic.
I (and I assume lots of other people) were following repositories because they liked them, the same way someone might bookmark a page because they liked it. But this meant they got every commit and issue update for lots of projects, which was unnecessary clutter.
Github realized this and made a distinction between liking a repository and actively following its every change.
The stars/followers update says a lot about how good Github is at stepping back and looking at the user experience as a whole.
"The stars/followers update says a lot about how good Github is at stepping back and looking at the user experience as a whole."
Ehh...it says that a lot of github's popularity is amongst people who do things like "following repositories because they like them", without actually being interested in the details of the projects they "follow". (Meanwhile, the rest of us are over here bookmarking webpages with our bookmark button, and trying to use GitHub to write code, and finding the system lacking...)
I've never "followed" a repository, unless I actually wanted to, you know...follow the repository. But you do raise a good point: GitHub lives in this weird hybrid world that's grown well beyond a simple tool for writing code. Nowadays, much of their user base is there because they think it's everything from a social network, to a blog host, to an online resume. It's probably not surprising that they've lost some focus.
> it says that a lot of github's popularity is amongst people who do things like "following repositories because they like them"
Yes, why not? I'm happy to star the repo which has the code my phone is running, just for later references. It might be far from the most useful feature at github, but what does it tell about me? Why are you being mean, if I may ask?
> Meanwhile, the rest of us
You and parent and maybe grand parent use this "rest of us". What does it mean? That you need to bring with you the "rest of us" (your team, your friends?) to make a point.
Mind you, under the hypothesis I understood it properly, I actually agree with your core point, which is that github is sometime giving the impression to feed the crowd with new features that are a tight bit superficial.
But this point is 98% uninteresting if you don't bring a laundrylist of mind-breaking feature you think should be coded instead. I'll help with a few:
- Commit forwarding to same repo at other hosts
- Use github as git-svn interface
- Private repos (I seem to be the only one to not want everyone to peek at my shitty hardcoded bashrc)
- Shared repo templates (eg create a new repo with a python gunicorn setup ready made, after filling a few fields), a la Linode recipies
- Allow-all repos, anyone can commit to it.
- Shareable user created repo analysers, code checkers, commit hooks.
I have no idea if any of these ideas is sane, but at least it should leave a bit less negative trails on this board.
I (and I assume lots of other people) were following repositories because they liked them, the same way someone might bookmark a page because they liked it. But this meant they got every commit and issue update for lots of projects, which was unnecessary clutter.
Github realized this and made a distinction between liking a repository and actively following its every change.
The stars/followers update says a lot about how good Github is at stepping back and looking at the user experience as a whole.