Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We lost 54k GitHub stars

httpie.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 697 posts

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#81

Post by calcifer »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #20
akerl_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the repo goes private, people who can’t see it any more can’t have it in their list of starred repos.

Why not? I think the respectful solution is to show it as "you starred X, it's private now, you can unstar if you like" (make sure if the name changes privately then the new name isn't shown). Such a solution is not only good in the case of mistakes like this, it also doesn't gaslight the person that starred a repo only for it to disappear from their list.

> it also doesn't gaslight the person that starred a repo only for it to disappear from their list.

It's honestly hilarious how the definition of 'gaslight' has expanded so dramatically in the past few years that it now means 'anything that confuses me'.

For future reference, here's what it actually means [1]:

> Psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator

Github did none of those things to you.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gaslighting

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#83

Post by dmitriid »

capableweb wrote: post #53
ghoomketu wrote: post #17

That comparison spot the difference pic is really scary. I had to check it 2 times myself before I could spot that the last line is different. Now that you're on the HN's frontpage, hopefully somebody from Github upper management will see this and all will be good soon thanks to gold old HN (especially when they did the same thing themselves and restored it). Wish you the best.

> That comparison spot the difference pic is really scary. I had to check it 2 times myself before I could spot that the last line is different. That's not the only difference. The other difference is that you also have to type the full repository name, including the organization name. If they wanted to delete the correct repository, they would have to type httpie/.github, but instead they typed httpie/httpie. It's u…

> The other difference is that you also have to type the full repository name, including the organization name.

No, you don't have to type it, and I doubt anyone types it. You copy that line and paste it. Often it's done on autopilot, especially when in a rush.

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#84

Post by bsuvc »

Sure, the author should be responsible.

Yes, GitHub should have a better UX around this action.

But...

There is another thing to consider:

Is it really necessary that a repo that is accidentally made private and then made public should lose its stars anyway?

Is that really what the repo owner or the people who starred the repo even want to happen?

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#85

Post by tedivm »

paxys wrote: post #28
williamsmj wrote: post #16

https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/10/26/num/ makes a similar point. I don't remember us saying people only have themselves to blame when that article was posted ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24904204 ). Not sure why we're doing it on this post, which makes a number of completely reasonable and specific suggestions for improvement.

"Type a specific thing to confirm" (as suggested by the post you linked) is exactly what Github does for destructive actions. And the author still messed it up because they were on "autopilot". At that point the suggestions go beyond being reasonable.

This isn't "exactly" what Github does. The author suggests the number of machines to destroy in their example- a Github equivalent would be to use a number that represents the amount of resources to be destroyed. This is close to what the OP recommended.

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#86

Post by Dylan16807 »

paxys wrote: post #9

"It's their fault, they only showed 5 warning banners. A 6th one would have totally stopped me from doing this." If a "type your repository name to confirm" box still doesn't make you double check that you picked the right repository, what else can they even do?

> If a "type your repository name to confirm" box still doesn't make you double check that you picked the right repository, what else can they even do?

It makes you type user/repo, which is different in a serious way. It's easy for the difference between ".github" and "httpie" to set off alarm bells. But the difference between "httpie/.github" and "httpie/httpie" can slip through.

> "It's their fault, they only showed 5 warning banners. A 6th one would have totally stopped me from doing this."

The request is for the warning to say how much will be deleted, not to add another step.

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#88

Post by pessimizer »

robonerd wrote: post #62
BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTTPie's watches were irreversibly deleted, too.

> Irreversible If the watchers still care to watch, they can choose to watch again.

That's not a reversal. If I burned your diary, you could write a new one, but nobody would call that a reversal.

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#89

Post by hnlmorg »

capableweb wrote: post #59
jakelazaroff wrote: post #27

GitHub made a cardinal UX design sin here: never use a warning when you mean undo [1]. If they had given even a five minute grace period before starting the irreversible process of removing all the watchers, this wouldn’t have happened. https://alistapart.com/article/neveruseawarning/

Which comes with its own problems. What if I just published something I wanted to be secret? Then I need to be able to switch it back to private, and it has to be quick, not after five minutes. Distributed systems with eventual consistency already make fixes like that hard, not to mention caches and whatever.

The GP didn’t mean “wait 5 minutes before making any action”, they meant “stage the change so the user can see the result of their action but they still has a grace period to undo it”.

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#90

Post by FabHK »

capableweb wrote: post #53
ghoomketu wrote: post #17

That comparison spot the difference pic is really scary. I had to check it 2 times myself before I could spot that the last line is different. Now that you're on the HN's frontpage, hopefully somebody from Github upper management will see this and all will be good soon thanks to gold old HN (especially when they did the same thing themselves and restored it). Wish you the best.

> That comparison spot the difference pic is really scary. I had to check it 2 times myself before I could spot that the last line is different. That's not the only difference. The other difference is that you also have to type the full repository name, including the organization name. If they wanted to delete the correct repository, they would have to type httpie/.github, but instead they typed httpie/httpie. It's u…

> I don't know what else they could have done to try to prevent it.

As the author of the post suggests: Prominently spell out "This will remove 54,000 stars." vs. "This won't remove any stars (there are none yet)."

Post reply on HN