8 ms·

Really, the issue is that the news feed is broken. Even following a relatively small number of people and projects (10 and 29 respectively) my news feed is domi

by necubi 15y ago

Really, the issue is that the news feed is broken. Even following a relatively small number of people and projects (10 and 29 respectively) my news feed is dominated by the many updates (issues and commits) from a couple of popular projects. The result is that things I might be more interested in from smaller projects are effectively invisible. Facebook has done a really good job solving the problems of information overload and would provide a good model. The most important step is to group updates from each project. Right now half of my news feed is comments on a single repository. Those should take up only one or two slots. The next step is to filter according to some metric of "interestingness." This is more challenging, but clearly solvable using machine learning (let us tag posts as interesting or not interesting to train the classifier). I'd love to see GitHub make the news feed more useful. It's currently the most unpleasant part of an otherwise nearly perfect experience.

jzawodn 15y ago
Yes. 100 times yes.
larrywright 15y ago
Excellently stated. Up until a week ago, I was following around 200 projects on Github. I recently went through and unfollowed almost all of them (I think I left about 5-10 that I really care about). I did all this because the news feed had become completely useless for the reasons you describe above.
goatslacker 15y ago
+1. Having users micromanage their commits to their repository because of fear of losing "popularity" is not the solution. Automation is the path to the future, let the computer aggregate the content for us and display a cleaner news feed.
eli 15y ago
Even just a really naive solution: offer me a view that shows only the most recent 2-3 updates for each project I watch. That would solve about 95% of my problems with the news feed.
- stevejalim 15y ago
  And let me trigger an accordion to see the rest of the updates from that project, if there are any.
- astrodust 15y ago
  I'd love just the last update for each project. It's handy to use "Watch" as a sort of bookmarking tool.
iamgilesbowkett 15y ago
Really, the issue is that the news feed is broken. Absolutely. I coded up a replacement using the GitHub API: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/10/node-miniapp-minimal-github-dashboard.html http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/10/node-miniapp-minima... It broke when they changed the API, but by then I had found http://defunkt.io/dotjs http://defunkt.io/dotjs, which allows you to execute any code in a ~/.js file for a given domain. So I put $("div.news").hide(); in my github.com.js and instantly had a more relaxing, comfortable life. I completely disagree with this part of your post: Facebook has done a really good job solving the problems of information overload and would provide a good model. But I do agree with these: The most important step is to group updates from each project. Right now half of my news feed is comments on a single repository. Those should take up only one or two slots. The next step is to filter according to some metric of "interestingness." My advice is do it and share the hack. I think the best way to find trouble spots in your UI is to find out what people are writing hacks to work around.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  For the record, you will only get hacked work-arounds if your product is oriented at developers. Still, I'd rather spend time hacking on my projects than hacking on github's.
- kablamo 15y ago
  Thanks for mentioning dotjs! I didn't know about that project. Basically its greasemonkey but easier to use.
bborud 15y ago
I think what I would like is a summarized view of the projects I am committing to. For instance "Cloudname/cloudname (5)" for "5 unseen updates for Cloudname". And I'd like a different summarized view for the projects I am only following.
tommoor 15y ago
Don't even get me started on how broken the fork system is!
gpambrozio 15y ago
My solution to this was to use watching as a way to bookmark interesting repos. But since searching for those was impossible I created GH2Evernote, a service that gets the readme of all your watched repos and adds it to a notebook in your Evernote account. This makes watching repos useful again, at least for me. I agree that this is broken and I never, ever look at my stream in GitHub. But now I'm making good use of my watched repos. Update: I dont't know why but my HN submission only appears to me. Here's the direct link: http://www.gustavo.eng.br/gh2evernote/ http://www.gustavo.eng.br/gh2evernote/

by necubi 15y ago

jzawodn 15y ago

Yes. 100 times yes.

larrywright 15y ago

Excellently stated. Up until a week ago, I was following around 200 projects on Github. I recently went through and unfollowed almost all of them (I think I left about 5-10 that I really care about). I did all this because the news feed had become completely useless for the reasons you describe above.

goatslacker 15y ago

+1. Having users micromanage their commits to their repository because of fear of losing "popularity" is not the solution. Automation is the path to the future, let the computer aggregate the content for us and display a cleaner news feed.

eli 15y ago

Even just a really naive solution: offer me a view that shows only the most recent 2-3 updates for each project I watch. That would solve about 95% of my problems with the news feed.

stevejalim 15y ago
And let me trigger an accordion to see the rest of the updates from that project, if there are any.
astrodust 15y ago
I'd love just the last update for each project. It's handy to use "Watch" as a sort of bookmarking tool.

iamgilesbowkett 15y ago

Really, the issue is that the news feed is broken. Absolutely. I coded up a replacement using the GitHub API: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/10/node-miniapp-minimal-github-dashboard.html http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/10/node-miniapp-minima... It broke when they changed the API, but by then I had found http://defunkt.io/dotjs http://defunkt.io/dotjs, which allows you to execute any code in a ~/.js file for a given domain. So I put $("div.news").hide(); in my github.com.js and instantly had a more relaxing, comfortable life. I completely disagree with this part of your post: Facebook has done a really good job solving the problems of information overload and would provide a good model. But I do agree with these: The most important step is to group updates from each project. Right now half of my news feed is comments on a single repository. Those should take up only one or two slots. The next step is to filter according to some metric of "interestingness." My advice is do it and share the hack. I think the best way to find trouble spots in your UI is to find out what people are writing hacks to work around.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago
For the record, you will only get hacked work-arounds if your product is oriented at developers. Still, I'd rather spend time hacking on my projects than hacking on github's.
kablamo 15y ago
Thanks for mentioning dotjs! I didn't know about that project. Basically its greasemonkey but easier to use.

bborud 15y ago

I think what I would like is a summarized view of the projects I am committing to. For instance "Cloudname/cloudname (5)" for "5 unseen updates for Cloudname". And I'd like a different summarized view for the projects I am only following.

tommoor 15y ago

Don't even get me started on how broken the fork system is!

gpambrozio 15y ago

My solution to this was to use watching as a way to bookmark interesting repos. But since searching for those was impossible I created GH2Evernote, a service that gets the readme of all your watched repos and adds it to a notebook in your Evernote account. This makes watching repos useful again, at least for me. I agree that this is broken and I never, ever look at my stream in GitHub. But now I'm making good use of my watched repos. Update: I dont't know why but my HN submission only appears to me. Here's the direct link: http://www.gustavo.eng.br/gh2evernote/ http://www.gustavo.eng.br/gh2evernote/