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Trending tabs are being deprecated due to low usage

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Re: Trending tabs are being deprecated due to low usage

#41

Post by nielsole »

p-e-w wrote: post #4

GitHub could never quite decide whether they want to be a social network or not. The "Trending" page (which has been useless for a long time due to the ranking algorithm rewrite several years ago) is just one example of this indecision. The way users can vote on issues with "thumbs up", "heart", "rocket", and "fanfare" emojis (instead of simply "up" and "down") is another, and the ridiculous "achievements" on user pa…

I must say that the "following" timeline with who starred what on the main view is mildly interesting.

Re: Trending tabs are being deprecated due to low usage

#42

Post by nmfisher »

spookthesunset wrote: post #7
p-e-w wrote: post #4

GitHub could never quite decide whether they want to be a social network or not. The "Trending" page (which has been useless for a long time due to the ranking algorithm rewrite several years ago) is just one example of this indecision. The way users can vote on issues with "thumbs up", "heart", "rocket", and "fanfare" emojis (instead of simply "up" and "down") is another, and the ridiculous "achievements" on user pa…

I mean it is worth playing around in that space to see if it sticks. Maybe there is an alternate universe where they stuff became really popular? You wouldn’t know unless you tried! Hopefully they didn’t invest too much into their MVP…

Agreed. I think all of these features/additions have been useless, but I'm not going to criticize them for trying out something new.

Re: Trending tabs are being deprecated due to low usage

#43

Post by jillesvangurp »

philliphaydon wrote: post #15

I honestly had no idea this page existed...

Same here. For the first time ever, I clicked through the explore section today and found nothing of interest there. They could remove the whole explore section and I would never have noticed.

Re: Trending tabs are being deprecated due to low usage

#46

Post by kyleee »

most things where organic growth can shine through seem to get nerfed and/or closed down. they made it worse years ago, and will now close it even though it's a great view into what's happening on github, great for fosterting what little spontaneous community/interaction exists on github, and enjoyed by many people.

but as others have alluded to, this will send some PM's kid(s) to college or help with the mortgage on their 2nd or 3rd property and should be a reminder that it's not great to rely on a company (especially a big co. with a wild track record like microsoft) for services, especially where important things like community or source code management are concerned

Re: Trending tabs are being deprecated due to low usage

#48

Post by TAForObvReasons »

p-e-w wrote: post #36
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social network aspect was a means to an end ("get enterprise customers"), but the needs of enterprise customers differ from the needs of open source communities. Hence the "indecision"

> the needs of enterprise customers differ from the needs of open source communities Indeed, but GitHub's "social" features cater neither to enterprise customers nor to open source communities, but to a (hypothetical?) group of people that want a blend of software engineering and Instagram-style popularity chasing, with a bit of cartoon cuteness sprinkled on top. I honestly found the introduction of the "achievements…

Stars at some point served as "social proof" of something (eyeballs, users, interest), but Goodhart's law struck.

At least three investor groups are explicitly looking at lists of the most starred / forked projects and throwing money at those with "Instagram-style popularity", so we've reached the stage where people can trade in the "internet points" for real money.

Re: Trending tabs are being deprecated due to low usage

#49

Post by rgoulter »

matsemann wrote: post #10
quyleanh wrote: post #3

I check this page everyday. A lot of my starred repos come from this page. For me, the Trending page is even more useful than Explore page. Still wondering why Explore page has more spotlight than Trending page.

Just curious, but why star them at all? I've starred 11 repos in my many years on github, to bookmark some specific projects. But others in my feed star projects daily and have over a thousand projects in their star list. I'm curious to why. Will you ever check them out again? Isn't the list now so long it's hard to find things in it?

While maybe it's not very useful for your own bookmarking, there are other useful effects:

- Saying "I think it's neat" internet points is kindof a nice kudos. It's relatively pleasing to see some stars on your repositories.

- It's an indication of popularity/usage. If you have to rely on some dependency, "choose the one with the most stars" will probably give you a good result for next to no effort.

- In terms of social networking: I can then see what repositories others have starred.

Re: Trending tabs are being deprecated due to low usage

#50

Post by notduncansmith »

favorited wrote: post #26

The trending page is pretty much the only reason I go to GitHub these days. Weirdly, I've been low-key worried about it ever since they added the "Spoken Language" dropdown, which AFAICT is the only real change from the last few years. It's not that I think being able to search by spoken language is bad or anything, it just screams of a middle manager trying to "solve" the important problem of a few people being conf…

I have run across several projects I wanted to use but whose main documentation was not in a language I spoke well enough. It would be nice to only show repositories documented in languages I know well enough to interpret reasonable demands.
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