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GitHub backtracks on deprecating the trending tabs page

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Re: GitHub backtracks on deprecating the trending tabs page

#61

Post by skywhopper »

jimminy wrote: post #31

I do find it a little odd all the comments in this thread are focusing on it as though it was a straight telemetry/metric decision. From the update, this feels more like it was problem area for maintenance purposes, then had its telemetry assessed for decision. "The data pipeline that powers the page has historically proven problematic to maintain and so given the low usage, we decided to switch off the Trending page…

My read of that line is, “the person who built this feature left, no team owns it, it needs a full rewrite, but we have other priorities”. It’s not surprising the metrics show the page usage isn’t growing. GitHub’s current UI doesn’t really direct anyone to it. What their metrics don’t show them is how important the page is to the users who do use it, and how important those users are. But it seems they have found out.

Re: GitHub backtracks on deprecating the trending tabs page

#62

Post by skywhopper »

ryanisnan wrote: post #29
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the github trending page, but I need only to visit it 10 times a year for it to fullfill its role. Yet I go to github every day. So visits are not the proper metric to depict how useful it is. Just because I consult a doctor once a year doesn't make this appointment less useful than the pizza truck I go to every week.

This is bad logic. Almost everyone goes to the doctor in a year. And again, what is the importance of a doctor’s office. I once used a security tool that looked at the world in a very narrow sense. Despite being a general purpose tool, it would often flag really bad false-positives like “this security group allows all ingress!”, while applied to zero resources, while completely missing other, real, consequential issu…

Rather than just a “doctor”, think “brain surgeon”. Very few people have brain surgery every year, or ever. Only 0.5% of doctors are neurosurgeons. But brain surgery is an extremely critical service to co tinge providing.

Point is, the relative value of a feature is not necessarily correlated with its popularity.

Re: GitHub backtracks on deprecating the trending tabs page

#63

Post by thiht »

polote wrote: post #40

They are incompetent honestly. If you were to discontinue this page you would at least talk to a few power users of the page and know their mind before taking the decion. They either didn't do it or did it. If they did it but backtrack now it show they don't have much confidence in their decisions, and if they didn't it, what are their pm payed for? That is pm 101

> They are incompetent honestly

Do you have to insult them? People make mistakes all the time, taking decisions is hard. It's clear they didn't expect removing this page to be a big deal.

The fact they acknowledged the issue makes them the opposite of incompetent IMO (inincompetent!)

Re: GitHub backtracks on deprecating the trending tabs page

#66

Post by lucasyvas »

This is a perfect example of why following Telemetry blindly is a shit approach to developing a product. Anyone who has used Trending knows it's probably the best feature on the site outside of actually working with a repository. In this case, the telemetry reflects not the usefulness of the page, but a total failing to promote its use.

I was actually shocked when I read the initial post because it showed a complete lack of awareness of how cornerstone this feature should be.

Re: GitHub backtracks on deprecating the trending tabs page

#67

Post by naikrovek »

DelightOne wrote: post #52
naikrovek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The initial call to deprecate this page was quite obviously driven by usage telemetry (i.e. "engagement" metrics) yeah, they said that. > rather than actually speaking to users about what they like and don't like how do you suggest they talk to their users to do this? less than 1% of people invited to take a survey actually take the survey. however, when you say you want to remove something, those who use it make t…

Maybe add a page-improvement survey banner, where one option is to take the survey and another is to say "it does all that I need" and another is "I don't need it". Note on the banner that this is about the page not seeing much use.

very few people will even see that prompt. i encourage anyone who doesn’t believe me to spend time with UX researchers while they hold focus groups. it is absolutely terrifying what must be done to have a thin hope that 50% of your users will find something that they want to find.

i have always had very little difficulty noticing differences in pages i visit even semi-regularly, so it was very easy for me to dismiss those who don’t as “idiot users” and to write them off an unimportant. it turns out that people who don’t notice things that you put in a large font, bold, in the center of the screen are a very large portion of your users.

it’s frightening what people simply do not see.

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