This seems like a good cause, but this is a bit of a crappy way to do it IMO.
Case in point: I've used a bit of Meteor, and I'm not really a fan of it, although it's an interesting idea. Should I just star the project anyway to get the donation to happen?
What was the rationale behind tying up donations with the GitHub stars? Landing on this today, it seemed to me more geared towards making meteor land in the 20K stars vicinity rather than helping CodeNow.
Not trying to troll, just genuinely interested in how you guys approached this.
Either way, it does seem like a smart "growth hack".
We picked GH stars because it's a transparent public number. Also because it's a relatively lightweight ask that still means a little more than a retweet or FB like. This campaign is about the existing Meteor community reaching out and encouraging new people into our community, and raising money for CodeNow is in the same spirit of accessibility and sharing.
Like Bahamut's comment shows, people do hesitate to star something they aren't actually interested in, and that's good; we want people to actually make an effort to tell their friends why they should check out Meteor. And then, if they succeed, it only takes 1-2 clicks for the friend to register their interest and get counted as part of the campaign.
Great answer. I love Meteor and it is great that your doing what you can tto help charity wise but some people will never be happy no matter what you do. Keep making great software and everything else will work itself out.
Case in point: I've used a bit of Meteor, and I'm not really a fan of it, although it's an interesting idea. Should I just star the project anyway to get the donation to happen?