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I do not operate a popular OSS project, but I have experienced the +1 spam and it sucks. The suggestions, in my opinion seem rational. Interesting side note: W

I do not operate a popular OSS project, but I have experienced the +1 spam and it sucks. The suggestions, in my opinion seem rational. Interesting side note: With the exception of Selenium, most of signees are maintainers of JS/HTML OSS projects. I wonder if we could objectively compare JS to <lang> projects in terms of the problems mentioned in the document. For example, there is a strong correlation between +1'ers and JS repos vs. Python or vice versa. Perhaps, we could walk away with JS devs are more chatty than CPP developers when discussing issues... I don't know, just a thought.

dikaiosune 11y ago
The same question about JS repos struck me. I suspect that if you write a shared letter then you just ask your network to sign it instead of <random other person from different ecosystem>, but I would be curious to know if these grievances are disproportionate in different communities.
- stingraycharles 11y ago
  I'd like to think that someone who writes this kind of letter would take such a thing into account. It's really possible that there is a strong correlation between a language and people being more involved with Github. I wouldn't be surprised that many developers from other language ecosystems just don't care.
ketralnis 11y ago
I think it's just monkey see->monkey do. As soon as one person said +1, everyone that saw it thought that that's just how you voted for stuff. It's the same reason you see comments on HN or reddit that just say "This." or that if you leave your shoes by the door, everyone else will do the same. I doubt these people keep doing it if you ask them not to.
- maxaf 11y ago
  There's an old story about this man who stood quietly next to a closed door in Moscow, said nothing to no one, and did nothing else of interest. Eventually others joined him, and before long a queue has formed. No one knew what they were standing in line for. Monkey see - monkey do.
  - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
    One of Milgram's experiments (not the infamous one) tested this, using people standing on the sidewalk looking up. https://youtu.be/P0e6zG8IbE8 https://youtu.be/P0e6zG8IbE8
    - ars 11y ago
      He might think he's testing conformance, but he actually just tested curiosity.
      - ywecur 11y ago
        Wouldn't they at least ask after a while if that was the case?
        ars 11y ago
        What makes you think they didn't? I saw lots of people look up, check the people around them and keep going.
    - ywecur 11y ago
      I really want to try this out myself now. Is it really possible that people just continue standing there while not getting why they are doing it? Don't they even care to ask? Feels like it would take just a single guy to ask: "What are we looking at?" For everyone to realize that they are acting like fools.
      - ars 11y ago
        So try it! Elevators are wonderful places for things like this :) Try the classic: enter an elevator and turn around to face the back - see how many copy you.
- Mickydtron 11y ago
  I agree that that's probably how it started, but it seems that once the cultural expectation has been set, it's hard for a single project maintainer to set a different custom just for their own project. People are going to use the conventions and communication methods that they learn elsewhere, even if you say not to in the contributing guidelines document. You might be able to get individuals to stop doing it in your project by asking them directly, but then each person has done it at least once, and you've had to ask each person to change their normal habits. Besides, as they note in the letter, there is a valid and valuable purpose to these communications, it would just be better if they were in a different place than clogging up the comment thread.
- nailer 11y ago
  StackOverflow tackled this by intercepting plus one posts and telling people to just vote. GitHub should do the same (with starring or following).
  - its2complicated 11y ago
    Yeah, and now look at SO, it's got so many "rules" that you can't look cross eyed at it without breaking one of them. "You don't have enough rep!" "A minimum of 15 characters per comment." "At least 5 characters per edit." "That's been asked before." Eventually, everyone just stands in line with blinders on, forced to stare straight ahead, mouth shut, one step at a time. There's never an end once you start "tackling" these so called problems.
- danielrhodes 11y ago
  "This." or "+1" is a more expressive way of showing support beyond anonymous voting mechanisms.
magicmu 11y ago
I agree that the suggestions are great; I'm also generally happy to see a letter like this take a clear tone without being aggressive or overtly confrontational. Re: the prevalence JS/HTML projects, I think that may just be a matter of simple base popularity; the web is the most popular development platform, and JS is the most used language on github (githut.info has great stats on this). If the letter gains steam, I'm sure we could expect project maintainers from other ecosystems to get on board.
bsimpson 11y ago
Google Code has primarily been used for Chromium's issue tracker, but they have a star system for exactly this reason. You can sort something by stars, but it's bad etiquette there for a user to comment +1 rather than just star.
- russjr08 11y ago
  Yep. The problem is that some users are not aware of the conventions, and often you see on the Android Google Code repo "+1" or something along the lines of "Google plz fix this". This becomes heavily apparent when someone posts an Android issue directly onto the Android subreddit. I suspect the same could happen with GitHub issues. When you see others posting "+1", then others follow the same practice.
  - caf 11y ago
    It seems to me that it would be a good idea to have a special-case that turns a comment where the only content is "+1" into a star request instead.
    - bsimpson 11y ago
      I believe GitHub translates :+1: into a thumbs-up icon, so you'd probably want to limit your filter so it only applies to non-contributors. But still, yeah, it would be fairly trivial to require posts to be more than +1, or to display a warning when anyone starts a post with :+1:
jrochkind1 11y ago
I noticed that most of the signers are maintaning JS/HTML projects too. I wonder if those types of projects are more likely to have these problems (larger userbase? Less experienced userbase? just different userbase?)? It could also just be a coincidence that they knew each other because they work on similar things, and a group of people who knew each other are the ones who wrote the letter.
briandear 11y ago
+1 isn't spam. It's valuable. However the implementation of how people can +1 an issue that's very important to them is the point. There should be a voting system. Spam would indicate that +1 adds no value.. But it does! If I have an issue with no comments, no indication of its importance to the users, then I would deprioritize that issue over another one that has lots of activity.
decisiveness 11y ago
Stack Overflow tried preventing +1/-1 comments[1], and the community came to the consensus[2][3] that those comments can be useful. [1]https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/277314 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/277314 [2]http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/277319 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/277319 [3]http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/283935 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/283935
- ergothus 11y ago
  From skimming, they found "+/-1, because REASON" to be valuable, not "+/-1". Indeed, in the open letter, they mention these are valuable, but the current implementation is a pain.
ggreer 11y ago
I maintain a C repo[1] and user idiocy is much lower than what I've seen in JS projects of similar popularity. Still, I agree with these criticisms of GitHub. I hate +1 spam enough to delete such comments. Sometimes I even ban those who do it. I'm frustrated by people who open idiotic issues[2][3][4][5]. I procrastinate on bad pull requests because my options are: 1. Close the PR with little or no comment. People then think I'm an asshole. 2. Spend hours explaining why the code is terrible and why it can't be improved. In addition to being a big time sink, PR submitters often don't understand the criticisms. Half the time, they still think I'm wrong. People even defend stuff as obviously wrong as adding a thousand lines of GPL'd code to an Apache-licensed project.[6] Then they say I should remove .gitignore support from ag because it doesn't implement 100% of .gitignore syntax. As if users would be happier with tons of extraneous results instead of some extraneous results. A lot of this is cultural, but GitHub could help steer things in a better direction with the features proposed in this letter. I hope they take this letter seriously. 1. https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher 2. User accuses ag of hard-locking his computer: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/791 https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/791 3. User wants ag to always print filenames, unlike every other tool out there: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/749 https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/749 4. User wants ag to replace PCRE with a totally different, incompatible regex library: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/698 https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/698 5. User aliases 'ag' to 'grep', then complains ag doesn't work: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/578 https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/578 6. https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/pull/614 https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/pull/614
- imtringued 11y ago
  About number 5. I don't see anyone complaining about anything.
  - sondr3 11y ago
    True, but it's still user problems that aren't problems with the software itself. Far too often you get people who want help with _everything_ on a project, from installing the right language, their editor and so on when it's not something that really concerns you.
slantedview 11y ago
+1 is valuable, it's just the form that Github forces it into (comments) winds up looking spammy. Make it a counter - simple enough.

dikaiosune 11y ago

The same question about JS repos struck me. I suspect that if you write a shared letter then you just ask your network to sign it instead of <random other person from different ecosystem>, but I would be curious to know if these grievances are disproportionate in different communities.

stingraycharles 11y ago
I'd like to think that someone who writes this kind of letter would take such a thing into account. It's really possible that there is a strong correlation between a language and people being more involved with Github. I wouldn't be surprised that many developers from other language ecosystems just don't care.

ketralnis 11y ago

I think it's just monkey see->monkey do. As soon as one person said +1, everyone that saw it thought that that's just how you voted for stuff. It's the same reason you see comments on HN or reddit that just say "This." or that if you leave your shoes by the door, everyone else will do the same. I doubt these people keep doing it if you ask them not to.

maxaf 11y ago
There's an old story about this man who stood quietly next to a closed door in Moscow, said nothing to no one, and did nothing else of interest. Eventually others joined him, and before long a queue has formed. No one knew what they were standing in line for. Monkey see - monkey do.
- semi-extrinsic 11y ago
  One of Milgram's experiments (not the infamous one) tested this, using people standing on the sidewalk looking up. https://youtu.be/P0e6zG8IbE8 https://youtu.be/P0e6zG8IbE8
  - ars 11y ago
    He might think he's testing conformance, but he actually just tested curiosity.
    - ywecur 11y ago
      Wouldn't they at least ask after a while if that was the case?
      - ars 11y ago
        What makes you think they didn't? I saw lots of people look up, check the people around them and keep going.
  - ywecur 11y ago
    I really want to try this out myself now. Is it really possible that people just continue standing there while not getting why they are doing it? Don't they even care to ask? Feels like it would take just a single guy to ask: "What are we looking at?" For everyone to realize that they are acting like fools.
    - ars 11y ago
      So try it! Elevators are wonderful places for things like this :) Try the classic: enter an elevator and turn around to face the back - see how many copy you.
Mickydtron 11y ago
I agree that that's probably how it started, but it seems that once the cultural expectation has been set, it's hard for a single project maintainer to set a different custom just for their own project. People are going to use the conventions and communication methods that they learn elsewhere, even if you say not to in the contributing guidelines document. You might be able to get individuals to stop doing it in your project by asking them directly, but then each person has done it at least once, and you've had to ask each person to change their normal habits. Besides, as they note in the letter, there is a valid and valuable purpose to these communications, it would just be better if they were in a different place than clogging up the comment thread.
nailer 11y ago
StackOverflow tackled this by intercepting plus one posts and telling people to just vote. GitHub should do the same (with starring or following).
- its2complicated 11y ago
  Yeah, and now look at SO, it's got so many "rules" that you can't look cross eyed at it without breaking one of them. "You don't have enough rep!" "A minimum of 15 characters per comment." "At least 5 characters per edit." "That's been asked before." Eventually, everyone just stands in line with blinders on, forced to stare straight ahead, mouth shut, one step at a time. There's never an end once you start "tackling" these so called problems.
danielrhodes 11y ago
"This." or "+1" is a more expressive way of showing support beyond anonymous voting mechanisms.

magicmu 11y ago

I agree that the suggestions are great; I'm also generally happy to see a letter like this take a clear tone without being aggressive or overtly confrontational. Re: the prevalence JS/HTML projects, I think that may just be a matter of simple base popularity; the web is the most popular development platform, and JS is the most used language on github (githut.info has great stats on this). If the letter gains steam, I'm sure we could expect project maintainers from other ecosystems to get on board.

bsimpson 11y ago

Google Code has primarily been used for Chromium's issue tracker, but they have a star system for exactly this reason. You can sort something by stars, but it's bad etiquette there for a user to comment +1 rather than just star.

russjr08 11y ago
Yep. The problem is that some users are not aware of the conventions, and often you see on the Android Google Code repo "+1" or something along the lines of "Google plz fix this". This becomes heavily apparent when someone posts an Android issue directly onto the Android subreddit. I suspect the same could happen with GitHub issues. When you see others posting "+1", then others follow the same practice.
- caf 11y ago
  It seems to me that it would be a good idea to have a special-case that turns a comment where the only content is "+1" into a star request instead.
  - bsimpson 11y ago
    I believe GitHub translates :+1: into a thumbs-up icon, so you'd probably want to limit your filter so it only applies to non-contributors. But still, yeah, it would be fairly trivial to require posts to be more than +1, or to display a warning when anyone starts a post with :+1:

jrochkind1 11y ago

I noticed that most of the signers are maintaning JS/HTML projects too. I wonder if those types of projects are more likely to have these problems (larger userbase? Less experienced userbase? just different userbase?)? It could also just be a coincidence that they knew each other because they work on similar things, and a group of people who knew each other are the ones who wrote the letter.

briandear 11y ago

+1 isn't spam. It's valuable. However the implementation of how people can +1 an issue that's very important to them is the point. There should be a voting system. Spam would indicate that +1 adds no value.. But it does! If I have an issue with no comments, no indication of its importance to the users, then I would deprioritize that issue over another one that has lots of activity.

decisiveness 11y ago

Stack Overflow tried preventing +1/-1 comments[1], and the community came to the consensus[2][3] that those comments can be useful. [1]https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/277314 https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/277314 [2]http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/277319 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/277319 [3]http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/283935 http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/283935

ergothus 11y ago
From skimming, they found "+/-1, because REASON" to be valuable, not "+/-1". Indeed, in the open letter, they mention these are valuable, but the current implementation is a pain.

ggreer 11y ago

I maintain a C repo[1] and user idiocy is much lower than what I've seen in JS projects of similar popularity. Still, I agree with these criticisms of GitHub. I hate +1 spam enough to delete such comments. Sometimes I even ban those who do it. I'm frustrated by people who open idiotic issues[2][3][4][5]. I procrastinate on bad pull requests because my options are: 1. Close the PR with little or no comment. People then think I'm an asshole. 2. Spend hours explaining why the code is terrible and why it can't be improved. In addition to being a big time sink, PR submitters often don't understand the criticisms. Half the time, they still think I'm wrong. People even defend stuff as obviously wrong as adding a thousand lines of GPL'd code to an Apache-licensed project.[6] Then they say I should remove .gitignore support from ag because it doesn't implement 100% of .gitignore syntax. As if users would be happier with tons of extraneous results instead of some extraneous results. A lot of this is cultural, but GitHub could help steer things in a better direction with the features proposed in this letter. I hope they take this letter seriously. 1. https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher 2. User accuses ag of hard-locking his computer: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/791 https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/791 3. User wants ag to always print filenames, unlike every other tool out there: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/749 https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/749 4. User wants ag to replace PCRE with a totally different, incompatible regex library: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/698 https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/698 5. User aliases 'ag' to 'grep', then complains ag doesn't work: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/578 https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/578 6. https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/pull/614 https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/pull/614

imtringued 11y ago
About number 5. I don't see anyone complaining about anything.
- sondr3 11y ago
  True, but it's still user problems that aren't problems with the software itself. Far too often you get people who want help with _everything_ on a project, from installing the right language, their editor and so on when it's not something that really concerns you.

slantedview 11y ago

+1 is valuable, it's just the form that Github forces it into (comments) winds up looking spammy. Make it a counter - simple enough.