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"the biggest accidental community loss in open source history" This was very much drama for very little. Sure, some might follow the project to know about upd
by NorwegianDude 5y ago
"the biggest accidental community loss in open source history"
This was very much drama for very little.
Sure, some might follow the project to know about updates, but if people care that much if they are using the latest version of a CLI tool then they will certainly check it out again later.
Very very few people of those who followed the project cares, and close to nobody cares what percentile the project ranks as by number of stars on github. Heck, even the author cares so little that he let himself mess around mindlessly while ignoring warnings and forgetting what the project was called.
Github warned about the action, and even required written confirmation to make sure it was the correct repo. The author also makes a point about naming being different for orgs and private, but if the github repo had any meaning then the author must have been very aware of what the name of it was.
Sure, github can add even more roadblocks and confirmations for those who are very careless despite all the warnings, but I don't want that personally. It's a tradeoff, and I think github has the right balance.
But sure, the situation is mildly annoying for those few who actually care.
But the dumbest part: The complaint about github not using time to restore backups to correct the mistakes of the author. Sure, they probably could, but how will they decide if a user should get special treatment? If they start bringing out backups for some users then there will be a lot of others expecting and asking for the same thing, and more.
Some might say that it won't be a problem, but considering that the author is already expecting github to restore their backups for him because github restored their own backups only proves the problem.
- chikipowpow 5y agoWow, the tone alone leaves much to be desired. You must have a very unempathetic culture where you live. Best of luck to you dude, all the warmth and kindness and good vibes!
- alecbz 5y agoWow, you must be a miserable, wretched, shell of a person to possibly write something like this. It’s really sad no one ever taught you manners. Hopefully one day you learn to be happy and a better person like me. ^ this is not much better tone-wise
- chikipowpow 5y agoHi stranger, good vibes to you too. Looks like you need them!
- chikipowpow 5y ago
- ascar 5y agoYour point was valid. The way you framed it wasn't. You could take from that to better provide constructive rather condescending criticism.
- mrmuagi 5y ago[flagged]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- yesenadam 5y agoI'm not sure why the drive-by, off-topic, gratuitous dig at vegans, as if you've decided they're a fair target, even in a comment instructing about kindness. I downvoted and flagged your comment for that. The HN guidelines apply regardless of your subject.
- mrmuagi 5y agoSorry, and thanks for correcting my guideline breaking. I am a stranger in strange lands... I brought it up because its an easy way to bring a moral rightousness example on hckernews. Perhaps more merit to the idea one should think of how ones word are received without context. To me as a casual reader here its like the space and tab holy war, except actually real. I don't dislike vegans per say as eat 80% vegetarian for health reasons. Is it presumptuous to assume you are vegan and took offense? If so, could you share some viewpoints on your decision if you are?
- 5y ago
- dmitryminkovsky 5y agoStars on GitHub are huge in open source. 54,000 stars is a big deal and puts your project into a super-elite category.
- mattgreenrocks 5y agoIf it’s such a big deal then why is GitHub not intervening to help a “super-elite” tier of project? Devs retconned the concept of a like onto a star. That doesn’t mean they are the same thing.
- dmitryminkovsky 5y ago> If it’s such a big deal then why is GitHub not intervening to help a “super-elite” tier of project? That's why this is a #1 post. > Devs retconned the concept of a like onto a star. That doesn’t mean they are the same thing. Yes, the semantics are ill-defined.
- munchler 5y agoWhat concrete benefits does a project get from having lots of stars? I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just wondering what the stakes are, since I don't have a lot of open source background myself.
- dmitryminkovsky 5y agoI'm not sure if there is a fixed universal set of concrete benefits. It probably varies from project to project and the people involved.
- bobbylarrybobby 5y agoYou missed the nuance in the criticism of GitHub's UI. The issue is not the presence of a roadblock, but that the same roadblock is put up regardless of how "actually" destructive the action to be taken is. The same roadblock should not be used to guard against both benign and severe consequences, else you have no real way of telling what lies on the other side of the roadblock you're plowing through.
- NorwegianDude 5y agoI didn't miss it, I just don't agree with it. With the name being different I'd say the roadblock is different, but you might not agree, and that's fine. I really don't care about the number of stars my project has if I'm going to make something private. It's not like most important projects sticks out by a very significant amount of stars. What percentile would? And what percentile of these occurances are on this scale? (basically none according to the article) I'd care more about the number of active contributors who will loose access, if I did care for a message like that.
- ttty 5y agoI watched people use software for years. If you have the exact same Popup every day, you’ll get used to click ok. Has no meaning anymore. It’s in the muscle memory.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cyphar 5y agoWhile the article focuses on lost stars, they also lost a lot of repository watchers. This is pretty significant because lots of downstream users and distribution maintainers use the watching feature to get release and security advisory notifications. If this had happened secretly it's possible that a security release would be delayed because they didn't see the announcement early enough. (In fact, in the article they mention they had a security advisory recently -- so it's possible the above scenario has already happened.)
- 5y ago
- alasdair_ 5y ago> Github warned about the action, and even required written confirmation to make sure it was the correct repo. Sure, but the written warning was the same one for a completely safe action.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoYou mean the one that requires you to write the full path of the affected object?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]