This is a very real problem, but I'd argue it's a problem from the side of the watcher rather than the watched. As a GitHub user, there are two kinds of repos I

This is a very real problem, but I'd argue it's a problem from the side of the watcher rather than the watched. As a GitHub user, there are two kinds of repos I care about: projects I'm active in, and projects I'm vaguely interested in and might be interested in keeping an eye on. For the first group, I want constant notifications. Let me know anytime anyone does anything. For the latter, I don't care, and probably actively don't want notifications. Right now, GitHub groups both of these use cases into the same 'Watch' functionality.