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Their Github account at https://github.com/prowriting https://github.com/prowriting looks boringly normal. I wonder what could have caused Github's systems to f

Their Github account at https://github.com/prowriting https://github.com/prowriting looks boringly normal. I wonder what could have caused Github's systems to flag it and a customer service rep to decide it was not legitimate.

jessaustin 8y ago
There doesn't seem to be much going on there? Over 13 repos, there are like 5 issues, all open, with one response that seems to be from some other user who just randomly wandered in? There are a few commits and a couple of branches, but no releases. Also a couple really ancient forks. This looks like a random person's GitHub page, not a software company's. They also don't have any links to their GitHub pages on their site. This isn't how organizations normally use GitHub. One suspects they're just using it as a CDN without engaging with any of the coding or social features. Perhaps GitHub has some sort of trigger when particular resources get requested over and over without any referer? Why not just use GitHub normally? Failing that, why not just use a CDN?
- cannonedhamster 8y ago
  CDNs cost money. The whole point of most businesses lately seems to be externalizing costs while providing the least amount of service that they can get paid gobs of money for. I understand that's a sound business model in a race to the bottom, but eventually you hit the bottom and the whole market losses.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    They don't cost enough money to justify this whole embarrassing episode. Probably they're just a little bit harder to configure than it was to just dump everything on GitHub.
- rqs 8y ago
  But now, think this whole thing in this way: Should GitHub block them because of all that?
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    That's really up to GitHub. They have to weigh the cost of being the lazy dude-bro's CDN against the bother of dealing with entitled whinging like TFA. To be clear, they certainly are justified in blocking this user. GitHub is for collaborative development, not code distribution.

jessaustin 8y ago

There doesn't seem to be much going on there? Over 13 repos, there are like 5 issues, all open, with one response that seems to be from some other user who just randomly wandered in? There are a few commits and a couple of branches, but no releases. Also a couple really ancient forks. This looks like a random person's GitHub page, not a software company's. They also don't have any links to their GitHub pages on their site. This isn't how organizations normally use GitHub. One suspects they're just using it as a CDN without engaging with any of the coding or social features. Perhaps GitHub has some sort of trigger when particular resources get requested over and over without any referer? Why not just use GitHub normally? Failing that, why not just use a CDN?

cannonedhamster 8y ago
CDNs cost money. The whole point of most businesses lately seems to be externalizing costs while providing the least amount of service that they can get paid gobs of money for. I understand that's a sound business model in a race to the bottom, but eventually you hit the bottom and the whole market losses.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  They don't cost enough money to justify this whole embarrassing episode. Probably they're just a little bit harder to configure than it was to just dump everything on GitHub.
rqs 8y ago
But now, think this whole thing in this way: Should GitHub block them because of all that?
- jessaustin 8y ago
  That's really up to GitHub. They have to weigh the cost of being the lazy dude-bro's CDN against the bother of dealing with entitled whinging like TFA. To be clear, they certainly are justified in blocking this user. GitHub is for collaborative development, not code distribution.