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We lost 54k GitHub stars

httpie.io

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Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#561

Post by matsemann »

davedx wrote: post #508

Contrarian opinion here. While things can always be better the Github UX is good enough here. I am reminded of an old phrase: “A bad workman always blames his tools.” At some point you just need to accept responsibility for your actions and stop blaming others.

> “A bad workman always blames his tools.”

That's a meaningless statement, though, as it can always be used against anyone complaining about something. I mean, you yourself wrote this the other day:

> I had to work with SAP Hybris a year or two ago. My IDE was not smart enough. Well actually I spent a good number of days trying to configure my IDE to be able to work properly with Hybris. I failed. What a mess

Are you a bad workman blaming your tools? Or do some tools just genuinely have faults?

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#562

Post by headsoup »

axiomsEnd wrote: post #528
tdfx wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm scared to see what your sanitized world would look like. Some of the most interesting art, music, and personal perspective has come from the consumption of the substances you deride as unnecessary and destructive.

How much art, science and deep, personal perspectives were lost due to abuse and death stemming from substance abuse? In case of certain substances (like alcohol) we have rather hard statistics about it's overal impact on physical and mental condition of society. Slow change from alcohol to safer alternatives (ex. cannabis) is probably one of the best trends in current times.

How many lives were saved or changed for the 'better' through the escape of, enjoyment of or numbing with drugs and alcohol? Who knows?

Perhaps if we think more like adults instead of infants we can try to understand complex issues better instead of reinforcing black and white stereotypes of the world or rehashing whatever our favourite source of ignorance tells us.

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#564

Post by Kronen »

matsemann wrote: post #561
davedx wrote: post #508

Contrarian opinion here. While things can always be better the Github UX is good enough here. I am reminded of an old phrase: “A bad workman always blames his tools.” At some point you just need to accept responsibility for your actions and stop blaming others.

> “A bad workman always blames his tools.” That's a meaningless statement, though, as it can always be used against anyone complaining about something. I mean, you yourself wrote this the other day: > I had to work with SAP Hybris a year or two ago. My IDE was not smart enough. Well actually I spent a good number of days trying to configure my IDE to be able to work properly with Hybris. I failed. What a mess Are you…

he said "I failed" not "the tool failed"

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#565

Post by prepend »

ncmncm wrote: post #270
saila wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to typing the repo name, maybe they should make you check a box for each type of item that will be deleted: [ ] Delete 54,000 stars? [ ] Delete 8,000 watchers? [ ] etc

Or just, you know, not delete anything until otherwise asked to. None of tha has anything essential to do with making the thing private.

Is the repo is private then it’s impossible for anyone to “follow” by starring or watching.

There’s also an issue of taking a repo private, making changes when no one gets alerted, and making it public to make it harder for people to know what’s going on.

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#566

Post by prepend »

mkl wrote: post #247
cmeacham98 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically dislike the "Lessons" section, as it throws all the blame on github and doesn't mention the seemingly obvious advice: "make sure you're not on autopilot when taking potentially dangerous actions, on github or any website". Yes, GitHub probably should show the stars in the warning UI, and hopefully that will prevent some of these mistakes. But GitHub makes it pretty hard to make this mistake already - t…

Having to also type out the number of stars you're deleting when it's above some threshold would probably eliminate the error. I think people who use git a lot are used to having the same or similar repository names in multiple contexts and locations (it's decentralised), so typing out the repository name, even though it includes the user/organisation, is not as severe-seeming as the designers thought. Confirming the…

I think of the burden on the typical use case and think the current prompts should be sufficient.

What’s the star threshold? 1000? 5?

I’d hate to now have to type in the number of watchers and stars as part of the private/delete/move/etc prompt for all the times I know what I’m doing.

It’s a balance between punishing the non-stupid users vs protecting the stupid users. And people switch between these categories. I might be non-stupid today and stupid tomorrow.

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#567

Post by matsemann »

Kronen wrote: post #564
matsemann wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “A bad workman always blames his tools.” That's a meaningless statement, though, as it can always be used against anyone complaining about something. I mean, you yourself wrote this the other day: > I had to work with SAP Hybris a year or two ago. My IDE was not smart enough. Well actually I spent a good number of days trying to configure my IDE to be able to work properly with Hybris. I failed. What a mess Are you…

he said "I failed" not "the tool failed"

While lamenting the tools. They also wrote "my IDE was not smart enough".

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#568

Post by [deleted] »

decafb wrote: post #533
sriku wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did have to type "httpie/httpie" in the box to confirm, no? I'm rather surprised that that didn't snap him out of auto-pilot mode. There ought to have been a DING in the brain seeing that the repo this is being applied to was httpie/httpie? OTOH, I haven't been in such a mode, so I really got no right to comment on this. Best wishes to the team -- that those who saw his post will restar/rewatch the repo -- and (fw…

By now I've become so accustomed to just copy the bold text from the line above it and paste, that it doesn't break me out anymore. I know I should concentrate and type it out, but in my head it has just become visual noise and a boring exercise.

[deleted]

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#569

Post by NoboruWataya »

> The problem is that the box looks exactly the same for repos with no commits and stars and for repos with a decade-long history and 55k stargazers and watchers. And it says “Warning: this is a potentially destructive action.”

It seems a bit much to expect the website to show you a warning of different levels of severity depending on the stars a repos has, particularly when the standard message is pretty severe and explicit. It even makes you type the name of the repo you want to make private before proceeding - I don't see how that wouldn't make anyone snap out of autopilot. I sympathise with the author's misfortune but it is pretty hard to look at that warning dialog and conclude that he was not sufficiently warned of the consequences or given a chance to reflect.

I find it disappointing that all of the lessons supposedly learned from this ordeal are lessons for other people, not the author. Surely lesson #1 should have been "check what repo you're in before taking destructive actions".

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#570

Post by yreg »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #569

> The problem is that the box looks exactly the same for repos with no commits and stars and for repos with a decade-long history and 55k stargazers and watchers. And it says “Warning: this is a potentially destructive action.” It seems a bit much to expect the website to show you a warning of different levels of severity depending on the stars a repos has, particularly when the standard message is pretty severe and…

I found this article interesting, exactly because "typing the name of the repo you want to make private before proceeding" seemed like a good solution to me as well. (Until now.)

However, I can absolutely imagine doing the author's mistake and I think their UI improvement suggestion is great.

To me the interface design lesson here is valuable. A recommendation to "check what repo you're in before taking destructive actions" has zero value, since everyone knows that already.

---

Completely agreed on the second point though, it's weird to blame this mainly on GitHub.

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