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>1. They use a very popular platform, on which most potential contributors have an account and probably use it daily. I'd argue that "science-based game" could
by simias 9y ago
>1. They use a very popular platform, on which most potential contributors have an account and probably use it daily.
I'd argue that "science-based game" could interest many more people than the subset of github users. If it was a list of programming resources then maybe, but even then many coders don't have a github account. I wager that "community curated list of resources" has a much bigger potential user base than github. "A list of resources to learn guitar", "a list of resources to learn Chinese history", "a list of portuguese language telenovelas" etc...
>2. They offer no-bullshit interface that presents you what you want to collaborate on and tools to do that, not trying to distract you with anything else.
Uh, dealing with pull requests is a no-bullshit interface to add an entry to a list? What percentage of the population do you think understands what a pull request is, let alone how to create one? What if there's a conflict and the maintainer asks you to merge and update it? That's not exactly facebook-level friendly right there.
>3. Nobody is trying to make money off it, there are no affiliate links, ads, or other monetizing bullshit, which is precisely why those lists are much more reliable and trustworthy than what would be posted on a hypothetical service you propose.
How so? If the lists become untrustworthy people will stop using it and the website loses money. There's no incentive for the website to mess with the lists themselves. And if you're thinking about "corruption" to bump certain resources to the top it could happen regardless of the rest, and it could be even more tempting if you don't actually have an other way to make "legit" money.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago> I'd argue that "science-based game" could interest many more people than the subset of github users. If it was a list of programming resources then maybe, but even then many coders don't have a github account. In terms of contributing, fair enough - but for just viewing, GitHub lists are public. > What percentage of the population do you think understands what a pull request is, let alone how to create one? If you edit directly on the GitHub website you don't have to deal with that, as it is mostly handled for you automagically in the background. It's not Facebook-level friendly, but then again this little barrier to entry probably does wonders for the quality. -- Re point 3, I could respond sentence by sentence, but what I really mean is that the site sets the tone and the culture on it. I can trust user-submitted lists on GitHub due to its culture. I wouldn't trust a user-submitted list on an ad-ridden site and/or the site that significantly rewards people for contributing. Commercial interests destroy the quality and trustworthiness of information, so the best place to post such lists is a place that doesn't care about the content it hosts. GitHub works because it's ad-free, free to use for contributors and readers alike, and doesn't try to monetize hosted content directly. So they don't set a money-making tone for their service, and they don't generally interfere with user-submitted content. -- Still, I think the core reason GitHub is used is that GitHub is good enough, and is already popular with the developers.