3 ms·

I love the github trending page, but I need only to visit it 10 times a year for it to fullfill its role. Yet I go to github every day. So visits are not the p

I love the github trending page, but I need only to visit it 10 times a year for it to fullfill its role. Yet I go to github every day. So visits are not the proper metric to depict how useful it is. Just because I consult a doctor once a year doesn't make this appointment less useful than the pizza truck I go to every week.

ryanisnan 4y ago
This is bad logic. Almost everyone goes to the doctor in a year. And again, what is the importance of a doctor’s office. I once used a security tool that looked at the world in a very narrow sense. Despite being a general purpose tool, it would often flag really bad false-positives like “this security group allows all ingress!”, while applied to zero resources, while completely missing other, real, consequential issues. My point is, you have to pull your head up, look at the real world and the context of your decision, and use your judgement. These aren’t philosophical mind teasers.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  It's not bad logic, it's an imperfect analogy which you are taking at face value instead of understanding the point that something can be useful even if infrequently used. Wether or not it applies at this case is not determined, but it does underline the fact using only visit metrics for this particular page does not give the whole story. Which is congruent with the reaction the announcement got.
  - ryanisnan 4y ago
    To be clear, I don’t know what telemetry they are using, I only used percentage of users who visited as an example. It does sound like, of the small group of folks who use it, they do enjoy it. Sounds like GitHub has to find a way to either expand that pool, or decrease the maintenance cost of the feature, or it’s possibly not worth it.
- OJFord 4y ago
  > This is bad logic. Almost everyone goes to the doctor in a year. They do? I'm not even making a point about developing countries and access to healthcare, I assume 'everyone' was implicitly 'everyone here' or in developed countries or whatever. But I would be incredibly surprised if that's true here in the UK. Is it an artefact of US health insurance that you can typically claim a 'check-up' per year (so why not even if not needed, you paid for it) or even that it's insisted on for the validity of the policy (ensure you don't have something expensive developing) or something?
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    > Is it an artefact of US health insurance that you can typically claim a 'check-up' per year (so why not even if not needed, you paid for it) The point of a yearly checkup is because, at population scale, people can't know if it's needed or not. Tons of issues only present themselves subtly or not at all until it's too late, or just the fact that most people aren't knowledgeable enough to differentiate issues from normal body things. While less advised for younger people, as you get older it's advised to get a yearly blood check to make sure nothing is trending out of balance. All that being said, I wouldn't be surprised if most people didn't get a yearly checkup in the US either, even thought it's fairly widespread common sense to do so.
- skywhopper 4y ago
  Rather than just a “doctor”, think “brain surgeon”. Very few people have brain surgery every year, or ever. Only 0.5% of doctors are neurosurgeons. But brain surgery is an extremely critical service to co tinge providing. Point is, the relative value of a feature is not necessarily correlated with its popularity.

ryanisnan 4y ago

This is bad logic. Almost everyone goes to the doctor in a year. And again, what is the importance of a doctor’s office. I once used a security tool that looked at the world in a very narrow sense. Despite being a general purpose tool, it would often flag really bad false-positives like “this security group allows all ingress!”, while applied to zero resources, while completely missing other, real, consequential issues. My point is, you have to pull your head up, look at the real world and the context of your decision, and use your judgement. These aren’t philosophical mind teasers.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago
It's not bad logic, it's an imperfect analogy which you are taking at face value instead of understanding the point that something can be useful even if infrequently used. Wether or not it applies at this case is not determined, but it does underline the fact using only visit metrics for this particular page does not give the whole story. Which is congruent with the reaction the announcement got.
- ryanisnan 4y ago
  To be clear, I don’t know what telemetry they are using, I only used percentage of users who visited as an example. It does sound like, of the small group of folks who use it, they do enjoy it. Sounds like GitHub has to find a way to either expand that pool, or decrease the maintenance cost of the feature, or it’s possibly not worth it.
OJFord 4y ago
> This is bad logic. Almost everyone goes to the doctor in a year. They do? I'm not even making a point about developing countries and access to healthcare, I assume 'everyone' was implicitly 'everyone here' or in developed countries or whatever. But I would be incredibly surprised if that's true here in the UK. Is it an artefact of US health insurance that you can typically claim a 'check-up' per year (so why not even if not needed, you paid for it) or even that it's insisted on for the validity of the policy (ensure you don't have something expensive developing) or something?
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  > Is it an artefact of US health insurance that you can typically claim a 'check-up' per year (so why not even if not needed, you paid for it) The point of a yearly checkup is because, at population scale, people can't know if it's needed or not. Tons of issues only present themselves subtly or not at all until it's too late, or just the fact that most people aren't knowledgeable enough to differentiate issues from normal body things. While less advised for younger people, as you get older it's advised to get a yearly blood check to make sure nothing is trending out of balance. All that being said, I wouldn't be surprised if most people didn't get a yearly checkup in the US either, even thought it's fairly widespread common sense to do so.
skywhopper 4y ago
Rather than just a “doctor”, think “brain surgeon”. Very few people have brain surgery every year, or ever. Only 0.5% of doctors are neurosurgeons. But brain surgery is an extremely critical service to co tinge providing. Point is, the relative value of a feature is not necessarily correlated with its popularity.