The Github Follower Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: The Github Follower Problem

#11

Post by flexd » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:36 PM UTC

I mentioned this in the comments section of post about blocking bullies. It would be great if you could follow a project or a person without having to see every comment and commit made. I watch around 100 repositories now and some of them are very active which results in my feed only containing updates from them.

As someone in the comments of this article (on the site) mentions, it would be nice if GitHub had something like Facebook's stream approach where you can hide individual posts or users. Perhaps even hiding a certain category of updates either globally or specific to each project?

Re: The Github Follower Problem

#12

Post by danishkhan » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:39 PM UTC

vijaydev wrote: post #5

This is why I built "GitHub Feed Filter" - a Google Chrome extension ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jcpkhafkpnaljjbgdg... ). It adds an interface in the page that enables users to look at feeds filtered by projects, by commits, by issues and by comments.

Awesome!! Going to install this right now.

Re: The Github Follower Problem

#13

Post by vijaydev » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 6:43 PM UTC

danishkhan wrote: post #12

vijaydev wrote: post #5

This is why I built "GitHub Feed Filter" - a Google Chrome extension ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jcpkhafkpnaljjbgdg... ). It adds an interface in the page that enables users to look at feeds filtered by projects, by commits, by issues and by comments.

Awesome!! Going to install this right now.

Thanks. Will appreciate any feedback to improve.

Re: The Github Follower Problem

#14

Post by pavel_lishin » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 7:23 PM UTC

bitcoin wrote: post #8

I'm currently following 866 coders and watching 356 repositories. My feed provides me with an immeasurable amount of value.

If it's an immeasurable amount, how do you know whether it's worth it?

Re: The Github Follower Problem

#15

Post by marcusbooster » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 8:24 PM UTC

The problem with the news feed is it assumes I want the same level of engagement with every project I follow. On my own repos, then yes, show me every comment and commit. But usually if I'm following a framework, I just want to know when something important happens, like a new version tag. And it's these larger frameworks that are usually busy and crowd out the other stuff.

Re: The Github Follower Problem

#16

Post by grandalf » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 8:29 PM UTC

In my opinion, the news feed should never contain more than one item for a particular project, or for a particular user (for user-centric actions).

I realize that rolling up data for this sort of display is hard, but if 4" of vertical space are used up showing commit info for one project, my feed gets pretty useless when I follow lots of projects.

I'd mostly like to see what is trending among the users and projects I follow. As it stands, 99% of the "noise" is caused by 1% of the stuff I follow.

Re: The Github Follower Problem

#17

Post by cincinnatus » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 9:42 PM UTC

gst wrote: post #4

For me the problem is that a "bookmark" function is missing. I usually follow interesting projects so that I'm able to find them later on. For most of those projects I'm not interested in the commits, I'd just like to have a link to them somewhere in my GitHub account.

Exactly this. There needs to be a bookmark function for interesting projects and the people that produce them. Some tagging on top of that would also be excellent for people with multiple contexts (work, hobby, side etc.)

Re: The Github Follower Problem

#18

Post by dimmuborgir » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 10:04 PM UTC

Lot's of good suggestions for GitHub coming up lately through various blogs.

I think it's high time GitHub put a public Brainstorm/Suggestions interface with possibility of voting the entries.

There's a GitHub profile on GetSatisfaction but there's no activity there.

Re: The Github Follower Problem

#19

Post by nasmorn » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 10:39 PM UTC

Very new worldy to find it strange that a search for a city returns the original one and not the copy. They should have named it New Camebridge.

Re: The Github Follower Problem

#20

Post by zbowling » Wed, Jun 01, 2011, 10:58 PM UTC

This carries over a little from Twitter. Using follower count as some sort of authority/popularity index on one hand but using it power a feature (the stream) on the other hand.

Facebook solves this by filtering the stream based on relationship level you have with the user (building out relevancy vector). You get to keep the status of being "a friend"(follower) without it affecting your news stream.