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Another interesting way - and I personally think its fraudulent. This is how it goes - run hackathons or sponsor events in Universities. There are a ton of coll
by halamadrid 2y ago
Another interesting way - and I personally think its fraudulent. This is how it goes - run hackathons or sponsor events in Universities. There are a ton of colleges who are constantly seeking support to run events.
Some companies take advantage of this by asking for stars in return of sponsorship. I have seen proposals that say for a $2000 sponsorship - 2000 stars guaranteed. The way it works is if a participant registers in the event they also have to show proof that they starred a specific repo that belongs to the company.
- wslh 2y agoThat issue you are exposing is everywhere so if fraudulent is the word we can see that a lot of social media and Internet, in general, is also fraudulent. It is call-to-action and conversion everywhere.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y agoAh, so is the quid pro quo here that if I want to run a hackathon in my city I can get Acme Corp to toss their brand name on it and fund it, but only if I get my participants to also star the repo? That does sound fraudulent. Do they put these agreements in writing?
- kortilla 2y agoIt’s sleazy but not fraudulent.
- verst 2y agoAt many hackathons I attended (as a mentor, company sponsor, or judge) approximately a quarter of participants had never used GitHub previously. Such participants often thought of GitHub stars as bookmarks. Many hackathon sponsors provide Hackathon samples or references on GitHub - or guidelines for winning the specific sponsor's prize. As expected, those repos were "bookmarked" by the students. In this case this is a misunderstanding of the purpose of GitHub stars by these new users, but certainly not a fraudulent action.
- mintplant 2y agoI mean, that's not a misunderstanding, that is what they're for. Conferring clout is a secondary effect. https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/exploring-projects-on-github/saving-repositories-with-stars https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/exploring-projects-on...
- krick 2y agoHuh? These are bookmarks. I never actually use starts for any other purpose.
- HEYGRANDMA 2y agoI've been on github for 10+ years and that's what I use stars for.
- diath 2y agoWhat? That's exactly what I use stars for - to bookmark repositories so I can go through things I've found interesting at a later date, or to keep being updated on their releases.
- cortesoft 2y agoBeen using GitHub since literally the year it started, and stars have always been bookmarks.
- Asraelite 2y agoIt reminds me of how subscribing on YouTube and other platforms turned from "inform me when new videos come out" into "I like this channel".
- lenkite 2y ago> In this case this is a misunderstanding of the purpose of GitHub stars by these new users Were we supposed to use stars some other way ?
- jasonjmcghee 2y ago
- est 2y ago> I personally think its fraudulent It's fraudulent only because Github use "stars" to rank popular repos. I think a repo should be ranked by code quality and update activity rather than "stars"
- demaga 2y agoAnd which method should be used to determine code quality?
- PeeMcGee 2y agoAn easy one would be to promote projects that look like actual useful projects that contain code. Most of the ultra-starred things I see are awesome lists or otherwise non-useful markdown listicles and blogs.
- est 2y agoIf that's a problem, then what method should be used to rank repos? If "stars" were the only metric we can find, then people should stop complaining "fake" stars.
- demaga 2y agoI'm with the other commenters on this issue. Stars are good enough as a marker, since you can use other markers (like # of contributors and recent commits) to make your own mind regarding quality of a repo.