4 ms·

Do stars really "help" that much? This sort of reads like projection more than anything.

stuntkite 8y ago
I think it does kind of in the way they say, but the real issue is that github has been a frozen project for like a decade. It's terrible at sorting, aggregation, ranking, sharing, and recovery of interesting things. It barely extends the existing git features. I'm not going to hold my breath for MS to make it actually better, but I am 100% certain that the inertia of open source projects would be greatly helped by a thoughtful way to just do and display basic tagging and project exploration history. Yes I know github tags exist (and git tags and branches), and I've found things that I wouldn't of found otherwise, but personal and maybe color coded tagging of my own stars and forks. Maybe a view timelines of my own exploration and groups them by the stats created by other people's tags. To say nothing of producing a feed that was even just a rip off of 2005 facebook's wall with accessory discussion. This could totally still be kept in repo if need be. Long story long, stars is all we got. They suck. So do forks. It's probably not going to improve when it merges with Skype. What are we doing next?
- threeseed 8y ago
  Have you signed up to the Dashboard beta ? There are some discovery elements to it. It's definitely an area they should improve in but I am not sure necessarily how many people are looking to discover new open source projects.
  - stuntkite 8y ago
    I haven't! I guess I should check that out. Really on the projects? Because I look at dozens weekly. Finding "that thing I saw that one time" is more often than not a painfully futile exercise on github. I can usually suss it out via google, but I think that says all I'm trying to say right there.
anonytrary 8y ago
The article explains why they help. Stars (upvotes, likes, etc.) are metrics, and metrics allow computers and people to know where to put their attention. Metrics help computers decide what to show you when N is very large. For social networks (this doesn't exclude Github, by the way), metrics are pivotal in determining how much attention certain content gets. Content with more attention in turn gets more feedback, which can help it get even more attention. Then there's the subconscious effect that metrics have on individuals. Content with many likes, upvotes or stars are generally seen to be "more important" than their counterparts because they are validated by other people. Countless times, I've chosen one instance of a module simply because it had more stars and activity than a nearly identical module. TLDR: Those simple numbers are used in more ways than you'd think, and they have non-trivial consequences in the world.
- sdrothrock 8y ago
  It is indeed a metric, but it's never once been a metric that I've used when considering github projects. To me, important metrics are: 1. Project maintenance -- when were the last commits and how important were they? 2. Issue tracking -- how active are the maintainers in covering issues? 3. Actual code/test quality As far as stars go, I've only ever looked at them as the number of people who decided to "like" something, but that's never a factor in my consideration since I don't know when or why they did it, whereas the other three things I listed are much, much more direct ways of viewing the overall "health" and usefulness of a project. My perspective is apparently an unusual one, though, which is why I wanted to ask and make sure I was understanding the linked article properly.
  - anonytrary 8y ago
    > My perspective is apparently an unusual one It's not unusual, it's just very high-effort and it makes no sense to ignore stars when N is large. In other words, when time is limited, low-resolution information becomes very valuable. > As far as stars go, I've only ever looked at them as the number of people who decided to "like" something, but that's never a factor in my consideration You might think this, but I am skeptical. For example, if you had to review hundreds of projects and you only had time to run your fair, thoughtful analysis on 10 of them, you would effectively be forced to look at stars to sort the list before processing it, as it's the next-best metric for judging a project. This is the same reason why job and college applications go through shallow sorting methods before they are reviewed by humans. You might initially think that GPA, years of experience, and other numerical metrics are shallow and do not tell you anything about somebody, but they are very useful when you have tens of thousands of applicants and you need to filter the list down to hundreds. My point is that sometimes you need to lower the resolution of your analysis because you don't have a lot of time. In practice, most people (and even computers) don't have time to look at everything, so they use any useful information they can find (whether it's conscious or not). I like to think that the number of points on an HN post doesn't affect my probability of reading the article, but if I took the data and did the analysis, I'd probably find that isn't the case and that I am biased towards spending my limited time on posts with more points.
EB66 8y ago
As someone who has published a few different open source projects as the primary (or sole) contributor, the stars actually do make a difference. It gives me an extra bit of motivation to maintain or improve the project if I see acknowledgement from others that they've used the it and it helped them. Of course I'd rather see forks and pull requests, but stars are certainly still a motivating factor.
stevekemp 8y ago
Sometimes on the github activity feed I see a "friend" staring a project and I just want to say "No, don't use that. It is obsolete. Use this other-thing instead". But giving feedback like that isn't possible, unless you do it via email/chat.

I think it does kind of in the way they say, but the real issue is that github has been a frozen project for like a decade. It's terrible at sorting, aggregation, ranking, sharing, and recovery of interesting things. It barely extends the existing git features. I'm not going to hold my breath for MS to make it actually better, but I am 100% certain that the inertia of open source projects would be greatly helped by a thoughtful way to just do and display basic tagging and project exploration history. Yes I know github tags exist (and git tags and branches), and I've found things that I wouldn't of found otherwise, but personal and maybe color coded tagging of my own stars and forks. Maybe a view timelines of my own exploration and groups them by the stats created by other people's tags. To say nothing of producing a feed that was even just a rip off of 2005 facebook's wall with accessory discussion. This could totally still be kept in repo if need be. Long story long, stars is all we got. They suck. So do forks. It's probably not going to improve when it merges with Skype. What are we doing next?

threeseed 8y ago
Have you signed up to the Dashboard beta ? There are some discovery elements to it. It's definitely an area they should improve in but I am not sure necessarily how many people are looking to discover new open source projects.
- stuntkite 8y ago
  I haven't! I guess I should check that out. Really on the projects? Because I look at dozens weekly. Finding "that thing I saw that one time" is more often than not a painfully futile exercise on github. I can usually suss it out via google, but I think that says all I'm trying to say right there.

anonytrary 8y ago

The article explains why they help. Stars (upvotes, likes, etc.) are metrics, and metrics allow computers and people to know where to put their attention. Metrics help computers decide what to show you when N is very large. For social networks (this doesn't exclude Github, by the way), metrics are pivotal in determining how much attention certain content gets. Content with more attention in turn gets more feedback, which can help it get even more attention. Then there's the subconscious effect that metrics have on individuals. Content with many likes, upvotes or stars are generally seen to be "more important" than their counterparts because they are validated by other people. Countless times, I've chosen one instance of a module simply because it had more stars and activity than a nearly identical module. TLDR: Those simple numbers are used in more ways than you'd think, and they have non-trivial consequences in the world.

sdrothrock 8y ago
It is indeed a metric, but it's never once been a metric that I've used when considering github projects. To me, important metrics are: 1. Project maintenance -- when were the last commits and how important were they? 2. Issue tracking -- how active are the maintainers in covering issues? 3. Actual code/test quality As far as stars go, I've only ever looked at them as the number of people who decided to "like" something, but that's never a factor in my consideration since I don't know when or why they did it, whereas the other three things I listed are much, much more direct ways of viewing the overall "health" and usefulness of a project. My perspective is apparently an unusual one, though, which is why I wanted to ask and make sure I was understanding the linked article properly.
- anonytrary 8y ago
  > My perspective is apparently an unusual one It's not unusual, it's just very high-effort and it makes no sense to ignore stars when N is large. In other words, when time is limited, low-resolution information becomes very valuable. > As far as stars go, I've only ever looked at them as the number of people who decided to "like" something, but that's never a factor in my consideration You might think this, but I am skeptical. For example, if you had to review hundreds of projects and you only had time to run your fair, thoughtful analysis on 10 of them, you would effectively be forced to look at stars to sort the list before processing it, as it's the next-best metric for judging a project. This is the same reason why job and college applications go through shallow sorting methods before they are reviewed by humans. You might initially think that GPA, years of experience, and other numerical metrics are shallow and do not tell you anything about somebody, but they are very useful when you have tens of thousands of applicants and you need to filter the list down to hundreds. My point is that sometimes you need to lower the resolution of your analysis because you don't have a lot of time. In practice, most people (and even computers) don't have time to look at everything, so they use any useful information they can find (whether it's conscious or not). I like to think that the number of points on an HN post doesn't affect my probability of reading the article, but if I took the data and did the analysis, I'd probably find that isn't the case and that I am biased towards spending my limited time on posts with more points.

EB66 8y ago

As someone who has published a few different open source projects as the primary (or sole) contributor, the stars actually do make a difference. It gives me an extra bit of motivation to maintain or improve the project if I see acknowledgement from others that they've used the it and it helped them. Of course I'd rather see forks and pull requests, but stars are certainly still a motivating factor.

stevekemp 8y ago

Sometimes on the github activity feed I see a "friend" staring a project and I just want to say "No, don't use that. It is obsolete. Use this other-thing instead". But giving feedback like that isn't possible, unless you do it via email/chat.