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GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

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Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#11

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

Khao wrote: post #2

Is this an April Fools joke? I've never seen anyone who gave a fuck about their contribution graph and record streak, except for devs who developped clever git repos that make your contribution graph show pixel art (which is pretty awesome). I want to say if you feel pressure when looking at your contribution graph, it's all in your head and you should take a break because you're clearly not thinking straight.

People care a ton about their streaks and I have noted that before. It encourages people to not have weekends.

Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#12

Post by grantcox »

Khao wrote: post #2

Is this an April Fools joke? I've never seen anyone who gave a fuck about their contribution graph and record streak, except for devs who developped clever git repos that make your contribution graph show pixel art (which is pretty awesome). I want to say if you feel pressure when looking at your contribution graph, it's all in your head and you should take a break because you're clearly not thinking straight.

I agree that it's a largely irrelevant / frivolous feature, and if someone cares deeply about it, it's likely a sign of some deeper psychological issue.

But deeper psychological issues are real, and gamification definitely pushes a certain agenda. When that agenda (in this case "streaks" and "commits per day") isn't really serving a community, it would be sensible for the community to tweak those rules. Putting some upper bound on them (for example, no "penalty" for missing days here and there, or stopping counting at some point) makes no difference to people "who don't care about it", but may make a positive difference to those people who care too much about it.

Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#13

Post by phkahler »

phkahler wrote: post #7

>> The contribution graph and the statistics on it, prominent on everyone's profile, basically rewards people for doing work on as many different days as possible, generally making more contributions, and making contributions on multiple days in a row without a break. If you're concerned about those things, you need to do some deep introspection and fix whatever issues you have inside yourself.

Same thing regarding the downvote ;-) But seriously, it's open source. Everyone has their reasons for contributing, but if you're trying to manipulate your stats in order to satisfy some psychological issue, well then you've got an issue. Why not address it instead of trying to feed it?

Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#15

Post by donatj »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #11
Khao wrote: post #2

Is this an April Fools joke? I've never seen anyone who gave a fuck about their contribution graph and record streak, except for devs who developped clever git repos that make your contribution graph show pixel art (which is pretty awesome). I want to say if you feel pressure when looking at your contribution graph, it's all in your head and you should take a break because you're clearly not thinking straight.

People care a ton about their streaks and I have noted that before. It encourages people to not have weekends.

As someone who used to care about streaks, it only takes one small commit and it can be a small reword of a readme ;)

Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#16

Post by wambotron »

rambos wrote: post #9

"Stop rewarding those who worker harder than me"

I know people who commit CONSTANTLY. They may not push for a while, so they can end up with a small pull request that has 100+ commits. It has nothing to do with how hard someone works, and more to do with how often they commit.

I don't care about the community aspect of it, but I worked at a corporation that did care about those graphs when they're completely meaningless. When your bonus depends on how many commits you make, why not commit once per line?

Re: GitHub contribution graph can be harmful to contributors

#19

Post by rambos »

wambotron wrote: post #16
rambos wrote: post #9

"Stop rewarding those who worker harder than me"

I know people who commit CONSTANTLY. They may not push for a while, so they can end up with a small pull request that has 100+ commits. It has nothing to do with how hard someone works, and more to do with how often they commit. I don't care about the community aspect of it, but I worked at a corporation that did care about those graphs when they're completely meaningless. When your bonus depends on how many commits…

thats not the argument made in the issue
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