7 ms·

Some people are pointing out how rare it is for GitHubbers to express gratitude, but GitHub doesn't exactly encourage it. Doesn't it feel inappropriate to expre

• flafla2 6y ago
  It would make a lot of sense for Github to support discussion forums natively, separate from issues. Or perhaps user reviews.
  • OJFord 6y ago
    It does, in beta as of a year or so ago, and out of beta a few weeks ago. You can turn them on or off per repository.
    • scoot 6y ago
      The trouble with GitHub discussions is that GitHub couldn't decide if it wanted discussions, or Stack Overflow style Q&A with upvotes, so it morphed into this awkward hybrid.
      • cutemonster 6y ago
        What's awkward about it? (I haven't used it yet)
• colonwqbang 6y ago
  I don't know why this is on HN; is it really considered so unusual for a someone to express gratitude to an open-source project? Concretely, you answered your own question. The "star" button is the default way of saying "thanks" to a project which was useful to you.
  • brigandish 6y ago
    I thought the star button was a convenient way to keep track of projects you're interested in. > is it really considered so unusual for a someone to express gratitude to an open-source project? I would say yes, it's very unusual. The general lack of basic civility is, in my opinion, just one more reason for the lack of diversity in projects and lowers the number of contributors to open source.
    • MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      > I thought the star button was a convenient way to keep track of projects you're interested in. Not exactly, as star numbers are made public, meaning it's also a form of public approval.
      • sonotmyname 6y ago
        More like a form of popularity, not necessarily approval.
      • brigandish 6y ago
        Good point. I had a cross project issue come in to a small project of mine a few years ago. The maintainers of the other project actually brought up their much larger number of stars to (try to) belittle me. Since that day I’ve noticed the correlation between stars and the kind of response I’m apt to get, negative in both senses.
  • civilized 6y ago
    One bit might be a bit less than people would like to express a large range of human emotions arising in a large range of circumstances.
  • 0xbadcafebee 6y ago
    Two times recently I wanted to express thanks (or just ask a question) and couldn't. In both cases there was no way to message the person via GitHub because they'd not publically shared their email address. In one case there was no way to open an 'issue'. And in the other, it wasn't relating to a repo, but a really excellent tutorial. In the olden times, we all just used email all the time for everything. It would've been bizarre for someone to work in open source and not have their email publically available. The funny thing is, I haven't shared my email on my GitHub either! I'm going to fix that today.
• dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
  This is what I wonder. I've opened "thank you" issues before, and wondered "how much will this annoy the owner/watchers?" For anyone tasked with maintaining a repo, any email notification of new issues must come with a certain level of dread. At least that's what it's like for me, even if I sincerely appreciate and enjoy receiving issues! I do, then, immediately close "thank you" issues so owners are not tasked with responding in any way, but still... And for any watcher, I imagine they are interested in notifications relevant to actual issues, not thank yous. My opinion is the current best way to say thank you is probably a star. Beyond that, it would be nice if GitHub added a way to leave a thank you or testimonial or something like that. Or even a formal "the repo is in use by such and such app/company."
  • dheera 6y ago
    I think it depends on the scale of the project. If it's a project that isn't full of all kinds of bug reports and issues already, thank you notes aren't a bad thing. As a developer what I like even more than thank yous are thank yous that explain how my code helped you in some specific way.
    • leeoniya 6y ago
      > As a developer what I like even more than thank yous are thank yous that explain how my code helped you in some specific way. i'll second this. post some screenshots of the thing you've made with my thing, or how it's improved the user experience or performance improvement metrics. what has my project unlocked for you, e.g. new use cases that were not possible before. compare it to what was there previously. i build open source stuff to scratch my own itches. knowing that it scratches the itches of 10k people instead of just 1 is the best outcome -- maximized impact. just a thanks is nice but ultimately lowest effort and not that gratifying.
  • Twirrim 6y ago
    > I've opened "thank you" issues before, and wondered "how much will this annoy the owner/watchers?" I've deliberately not opened "Thank you" issues, because I didn't want to annoy the owner/watchers. Certainly frustrating there is no way to express gratitude.
• runarberg 6y ago
  This is not what you are talking about but I would like to mention that as a contributor I feel like I often get a thank you note after I open a PR or even an issue in stranger repos. In my experience gratitude towards contributors is the norm, not the exception.
• jblarneyforward 6y ago
  Often I email the person directly to thank them, but only works if there’s a public email.
  • pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
    This is baked into Git at the core, but just like many other cases, GitHub subverts the intent of fundamental expectations about the way Git is supposed to be used and actively goes out of its way to make it difficult if you're interacting with the project through GitHub instead of local tools. (In fact, for new GitHub accounts, it even defaults to obscuring users' contact info, and it attributes all changes made through the web UI to an opaque @github.com email address. You have to deliberately go into the settings to turn this off, without ever getting a notification that that's what GitHub is doing.)
• Rompect 6y ago
  Isn't that the purpose of the star feature?
• mysterydip 6y ago
  I loved a library on github enough to track down the creator on twitter and thank him there. Not sure if he never saw it, or just didn't acknowledge it.
• kissgyorgy 6y ago
  > but GitHub doesn't exactly encourage it. I think this would be a nice new Category in Discussions; ":heart: Thank you"
• pault 6y ago
  There's an "ask a question" feature out of beta now that is designed for not cluttering the issues. I believe it has to be enabled on the repo.
• karmakaze 6y ago
  The missing state is 'resolved' between 'open' and 'closed' giving that time/space for interaction, or perhaps a closed disposition label 'resolved' as long as it is as easily surfaced.
• rglullis 6y ago
  Brave browser has made this integration where you can tip their token to people on GitHub (and Twitter, reddit and any site that people can verify domain ownership). Seems one of the best ways to show appreciation and gratitude without making it feel like a transaction or causing any kind of expectation like becoming a sponsor or patron of the project.
  • sonotmyname 6y ago
    I dunno, if I got ‘tipped’ wouldn’t that mean I’d have to figure out what Brave is, create an account, realize I got $0.03, and then just be annoyed?
    • rglullis 6y ago
      Besides being a global payment system that allows people to send micropayments across the world without having to disclose any financial data publicly, while fighting surveillance capitalism in the process, what have the Romans done for us? The "hassle" of doing KYC at one of the exchanges and verifying your identity is only once. The benefit of being able to receive little cash for privacy-preserving ads and use it to contribute to a healthier digital economy can last for a long time.
• JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  Many GitHubers have links to personal sites or include their e-mail address on their profile. You could reach out personally to give thanks.
• artemave 6y ago
  > Doesn't it feel inappropriate to express gratitude as an "issue"? Indeed! It must equally feel inappropriate to close a gratitude issue.
• momokoko 6y ago
  Idk. I think your comment sums up a general change that internet based interaction has created. I used to think it was generational but now I think it has more to do with spending most of your socializing online as opposed to in person. In person interaction naturally flows towards gratitude. Online interactions, like the one I’m having right now feels disposable. I don’t see your face and we can’t form much human connection. This leads to an online world of shallow interactions that leave us feeling alone an empty. Much like what happens to people that live in large dense cities. Our online interactions are so shallow, we feel it is the responsibility a product we are buying to facilitate a particular form of interaction as opposed to simply taking it upon ourselves to do it.
  • atoav 6y ago
    You have to work against that. It is usually totally possible to write an email to people with good repos. If they made your day, this is just part of giving back.
  • civilized 6y ago
    We're talking about interrupting a stranger to listen to us here. How often do you do that IRL? Do you just do it any old time, or do you look for certain signals that it is OK? I do think there is a generational "thing" where older people tend to see online interactions as superficial and unreal, while younger people see them as a natural extension of the IRL social sphere. As a younger person, I find it easy to point out that interactions with strangers present similar difficulties whether online or IRL.
• sillysaurusx 6y ago
  Not at all. I've been thanking Scott for making lumen every thanksgiving for several years now. https://github.com/sctb/lumen https://github.com/sctb/lumen I just close the issue immediately after opening it. :)
• tomphoolery 6y ago
  I hope that people use discussions for this in the future :)
• simias 6y ago
  Maybe we should bring back the "guest books" of the early internet, where you're expected to leave positive feedback if you want to. I'm not sure that general purpose reviews/forums are the right way to address this issue, because those can generate negative feedback as easily as positive and generate additional stress for the maintainer. I think a simple dedicated "you can leave a public thank you message to the maintainer here if you want" text box would do the trick.
• rattray 6y ago
  I wonder if fairly standard reviews might be helpful here. 1-5 stars, with text, and perhaps also links to issues if there are problems and an opportunity to share "used at $company" for endorsement. Or perhaps just a built-in "endorsement" feature, which companies can use to indicate that they use a project and find it valuable, perhaps listed on the sidebar. Could also segue into paid sponsorship and support. Insofar as GitHub provides package management, they could also prompt companies to endorse the packages they use. All of this might get annoying, nasty, or inauthentic, of course. Would need to be careful...
• ksec 6y ago
  I guess that is one features Github should "try" and work. Somewhere that users can express their gratitude ( in a non subtle way ) Sometimes it isn't just a dollar of sponsor, but people explaining what problem they had, how it help them, and notes of thanks. After all, Github is more like a Social Coding Platform.
• dochtman 6y ago
  I like to open issues or PRs I file with a note of appreciation, piggy backing on other feedback I have without opening a separate issue.
• pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
  > Doesn't it feel inappropriate to express gratitude as an "issue"? Yes, because it is, but I'd dispute the claim that GitHub discourages it. If anything, the people who use GitHub are more willing/most likely to misuse bugtracker for not just support requests but also general discussion and comments like this. It seems like there's a (non) issue like this that gets linked at least once a month on HN. I click through, get annoyed with the person who opened it, read the maintainer's response, get annoyed with their endorsement/encouragement of the idea, close the window, and then file it away in my mind or my bookmarks or both as an example of how annoying it is to try to collaborate with people whose platform of choice is GitHub. Post this stuff on Twitter, or a mailing list, or a discussion board. Or at the very least, be productive and file a bug that says something like, "I wanted to express my gratitude for this project, but the README doesn't link to any public venues for general discussion". You know: things that at least attempt to pass themselves off as legitimate bugs? Or just don't do any of that and keep posting this sort of thing on GitHub--but in that case, please kindly also curb your and your colleagues' whinging in all future instances where you find that someone has chosen not to host on GitHub and, upon with being asked to, they say "no" and point to things like this as being among the reasons why GitHub users can't be trusted to make responsible use of project infrastructure.
  • civilized 6y ago
    This makes sense to me. GitHub can remain a technical tool and the more social aspects can happen on social media platforms designed for that.
• eyelidlessness 6y ago
  I think the discussions feature might be a little more comfortable for more people to express gratitude, but like you said even that isn’t explicit enough. I also feel disinclined to post gratitude for fear it’ll register as noise. IMO since GH tends to be somewhat aware of how people piggyback their platform, a README gratitude badge might be a good place to start. It can be as simple as a button click plus an optional prompt to add commentary. In fact, I might make this a smol project to see if it gets some traction.
• yoricm 6y ago
  Personally, a text area is the only thing I need to express my gratitude. I'm doubtful about a UI that would "encourage" it. The last time I wrote on a GitHub issue, I started my message with a warm thankful line to the maintainer for his fabulous work. I meant it, and I didn't need any "reminder" to say so. It felt natural and important to me. I also put relevant informations to show my interest and the time I spent thinking about it. In the end, I believe it's more about the person posting, rather than the interface encouraging it, but I may be wrong.