8 ms·

True, but why do people think they need validation to collaborate?

by s3tz 4y ago

lawgimenez 4y ago
Stackoverflow also has badges and it motivated me a lot to answer questions on the early days.
CobrastanJorji 4y ago
It's because people often need validation to collaborate.
akerl_ 4y ago
Maybe this is a hot take, but… I like being validated? It feels good to receive positive feedback, and a ton of my life is structured to ensure positive feedback loops for things I want to incentivize myself to do. I’ve definitely contributed more PRs during Hacktoberfest to get a t-shirt. I’ve done Strava runs when I might have otherwise skipped a day and been excited to see a new achievement.
gjsman-1000 4y ago
Here's my hot take. I work for a small company, I'm the solo programmer. Our company's code is important, so it's all private. I work full-time and it is stressful enough, and don't have interest in working longer. Because I'm solo, I don't need Pull Requests for my own work, among other things that a team needs. Under this system, I get no badges. I appear as though I have nothing to show. Even though I have arguably done more and been responsible for more than many people with badges have. That's irritating.
- jwagenet 4y ago
  Isn’t this true on a private repo, or any non GitHub repo, solo or not? It’s been this way for a long time; if you cared about showcasing your contributions you would work on public projects, blog, or make a bunch of noise in some other way.
- frou_dh 4y ago
  The way they are named and designed is rather juvenile, so just think of it like not being handed Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck badges at the fair because you are an adult.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    Except it's also a professional forum, so it's more like you showed up at the office one day and it's full of kids and the project managers are spending their time handing out Disney badges and replacing the Kanban wall with memes instead of, y'know, managing the projects.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
peterkos 4y ago
I was really desperate to contribute to an open-source project in high school, specifically an iOS or frontend web one, and it was hard to find projects that I could make a substantial contribution to. Many with `good first issue` tags were not very active, and the ones that were active were hard to get my foot in the door. I was able to do a variety of "good first" things: readme updates, typo fixes, adding small features -- but it was hard to feel really _validated_ that my work was valuable, or that contributing to open-source was an impressive thing to do, because I (felt like I was) was surrounded by engineers, and nobody ever told me that OSS was "cool", until I met a company 3 years into college who valued OSS (more than just "wow, great job, you fixed a typo!")
- joshmanders 4y ago
  Just an FYI, readme updates, typo fixes, etc are "good first" things, but also very important, so while you may not have contributed to the code, you contributions are very important still.

True, but why do people think they need validation to collaborate?

by s3tz 4y ago

True, but why do people think they need validation to collaborate?

lawgimenez 4y ago

Stackoverflow also has badges and it motivated me a lot to answer questions on the early days.

CobrastanJorji 4y ago

It's because people often need validation to collaborate.

akerl_ 4y ago

Maybe this is a hot take, but… I like being validated? It feels good to receive positive feedback, and a ton of my life is structured to ensure positive feedback loops for things I want to incentivize myself to do. I’ve definitely contributed more PRs during Hacktoberfest to get a t-shirt. I’ve done Strava runs when I might have otherwise skipped a day and been excited to see a new achievement.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

Here's my hot take. I work for a small company, I'm the solo programmer. Our company's code is important, so it's all private. I work full-time and it is stressful enough, and don't have interest in working longer. Because I'm solo, I don't need Pull Requests for my own work, among other things that a team needs. Under this system, I get no badges. I appear as though I have nothing to show. Even though I have arguably done more and been responsible for more than many people with badges have. That's irritating.

jwagenet 4y ago
Isn’t this true on a private repo, or any non GitHub repo, solo or not? It’s been this way for a long time; if you cared about showcasing your contributions you would work on public projects, blog, or make a bunch of noise in some other way.
frou_dh 4y ago
The way they are named and designed is rather juvenile, so just think of it like not being handed Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck badges at the fair because you are an adult.
- morelisp 4y ago
  Except it's also a professional forum, so it's more like you showed up at the office one day and it's full of kids and the project managers are spending their time handing out Disney badges and replacing the Kanban wall with memes instead of, y'know, managing the projects.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

peterkos 4y ago

I was really desperate to contribute to an open-source project in high school, specifically an iOS or frontend web one, and it was hard to find projects that I could make a substantial contribution to. Many with `good first issue` tags were not very active, and the ones that were active were hard to get my foot in the door. I was able to do a variety of "good first" things: readme updates, typo fixes, adding small features -- but it was hard to feel really _validated_ that my work was valuable, or that contributing to open-source was an impressive thing to do, because I (felt like I was) was surrounded by engineers, and nobody ever told me that OSS was "cool", until I met a company 3 years into college who valued OSS (more than just "wow, great job, you fixed a typo!")

joshmanders 4y ago
Just an FYI, readme updates, typo fixes, etc are "good first" things, but also very important, so while you may not have contributed to the code, you contributions are very important still.