Or don't have people in your project that add random files or directories, and can't even explain what they are. I don't use .gitignore files in projects that

Or don't have people in your project that add random files or directories, and can't even explain what they are. I don't use .gitignore files in projects that I control. A few times I've been tripped up by these things ignoring something that should not have been. I feel that these files should stay local. I don't want your .gitignore any more than I want your .vimrc or whatever. If you maintain a very messy local repo with lots of extraneous files, and find that this file helps you when you're using git, by all means create one for yourself.