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

Stop abusing GitHub stars

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 44 posts

Re: Stop abusing GitHub stars

#21

Post by skinnymuch »

captn3m0 wrote: post #14
JohnTHaller wrote: post #12

It looks like SK Telecom (South Korea phone company) was paying people to sign up for GitHub and star things via a contest for gift cards and such. The project runner being starred, kyungtaak, was apparently complicit in it (according to Google Translate of the GitHub comments). They shut it down once the bad publicity started, deleted the original site promoting it, and archived the GitHub repo.

How’s this any different from all the “Follow on twitter, and RT to enter our Giveaway” promotions that happen?

On the surface if that happens and no one looks twice at that, this doesn’t appear to be so different. Main difference would be that up until now GitHub stars are at least perceived to be mostly untainted by that sort of thing.

Re: Stop abusing GitHub stars

#22

Post by aerialcombat »

This open source project has been in development for about 5 years by SKT (SK Telecom), the biggest telecommunications company. (think Verizon) They launched a marketing event giving people a Starbucks gifticon, a mobile voucher to use at Starbucks, for starring their Github project.

A bunch of people(developers) lashed back, while hoping that maybe it was just a mishap by their marketing department.

Then the lead developer of the project, kyungtaak, posted a comment saying that he would do it again if he had to because he "loves" the project so much. And that people just need to cut him some slack.

The developers got furious by the comment, and it's going semi-viral among developers in Korea.

The company shut down the event, and posted an apology.

Re: Stop abusing GitHub stars

#23

Post by skinnymuch »

judge2020 wrote: post #20
captn3m0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How’s this any different from all the “Follow on twitter, and RT to enter our Giveaway” promotions that happen?

The second fully Korean comment goes into it: [G translate] > In GitHub, the weight of Star is heavier than you think. It is absolutely meaningful to mix in some leaps as to how devoted to the project are contributors, how high the completeness is, and how useful it is.

Do Twitter or IG followers not mean something? They don’t have the same weight as GitHub stars, but you’re def going to be perceived differently if you have a lot of IG followers and not too many follows. I assume Twitter is the same.

Re: Stop abusing GitHub stars

#24

Post by lifthrasiir »

I've produced some rough translations (I had no time to proofread) related to this incident. https://gist.github.com/lifthrasiir/463b3b7e153dafe1319e5344...

I personally think that, it is clear that this is some kind of abuse but unclear if it is actually a violation of Github's Acceptable Use Policies [1] or not, making the incident somewhat more troublesome. Hopefully Github can update the policies to counter this kind of abuse in the future.

[1] https://help.github.com/en/articles/github-acceptable-use-po...

Re: Stop abusing GitHub stars

#25

Post by judge2020 »

skinnymuch wrote: post #23
judge2020 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second fully Korean comment goes into it: [G translate] > In GitHub, the weight of Star is heavier than you think. It is absolutely meaningful to mix in some leaps as to how devoted to the project are contributors, how high the completeness is, and how useful it is.

Do Twitter or IG followers not mean something? They don’t have the same weight as GitHub stars, but you’re def going to be perceived differently if you have a lot of IG followers and not too many follows. I assume Twitter is the same.

I feel the comment well covers why GH stars feel more immportant; starring a repo is something you do specifically when you feel the repo really helps you out, you feel like you may need it in the future, or you think someone put a lot of effort into something and executed their idea well. That personal measurement, the number of people [developers] who think a repo is helpful specifically for their use, gives the repo validity for new developers looking for a project that can also be helpful to them. While this isn't 100% true for every GH repo, a lot of stars is a good indicator for usefulness.

Twitter and IG followers effectively do the same thing, but the issue is that it generally only measures things in the spectrum of "posts funny stuff", "is popular", etc. The GH star system has more weight because of what it represents compared to the counters of other social platforms.

Re: Stop abusing GitHub stars

#26

Post by JunoJunho »

hnaccy wrote: post #15

What is the benefit for SKT of the stars? Just make project look more popular? Seems odd.

One of the project owner said that they are evaluated their outcome as SKT employee by number of stars in this repository.

Therefore, they made this ugly event.

Re: Stop abusing GitHub stars

#27

Post by bythckr »

reustle wrote: post #4
chirau wrote: post #3

Can someone narrate and explain what happened here? The page is in a foreign language and its contents have apparently since been changed. What happened?

Google translate the first two long Korean posts and you'll get the jist

I did no the translate, but could not understand anything.

Translation from http://b2b.tworld.co.kr/bizts/notice/noticeDetail.bs?seqNo=0... Hello, company T world.

Metatron discovery event prematurely closed . We will send Starbucks gift cards through individual mail to those who participated in the event sequentially.

We will inform you about the early termination of the event below.

====================================================== =============================

Hi, I'm SK Telecom Metatron event manager.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. As soon as we realized that the event could be interpreted as an event that could harm the open source ecosystem, we ended the event as soon as possible.

As an event coordinator, I would like to encourage our products to be more widely known to more developers, and I apologize for any inconvenience to the event without fully understanding the open source ecosystem.

We take heed of the developers' complaints on this issue, and we will take this mistake as a lesson to deepen our understanding of open source and contribute to the ecosystem. In addition, we will continue to support our members who are working hard to develop Metatron in the future so that we can communicate more sincerely with developers.

I apologize again and again.

================================================== ============================

I will repay you with better service in the future.

Thank you.

Re: Stop abusing GitHub stars

#28

Post by envolt »

captn3m0 wrote: post #14
JohnTHaller wrote: post #12

It looks like SK Telecom (South Korea phone company) was paying people to sign up for GitHub and star things via a contest for gift cards and such. The project runner being starred, kyungtaak, was apparently complicit in it (according to Google Translate of the GitHub comments). They shut it down once the bad publicity started, deleted the original site promoting it, and archived the GitHub repo.

How’s this any different from all the “Follow on twitter, and RT to enter our Giveaway” promotions that happen?

> Follow on twitter, and RT to enter our Giveaway

That's for promoting your brand.

> Signup and Star and get coupons

That's against the open-source ecosystem spirit, where the number of stars is a measurement of project popularity.

Re: Stop abusing GitHub stars

#29

Post by [deleted] »

skinnymuch wrote: post #21
captn3m0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How’s this any different from all the “Follow on twitter, and RT to enter our Giveaway” promotions that happen?

On the surface if that happens and no one looks twice at that, this doesn’t appear to be so different. Main difference would be that up until now GitHub stars are at least perceived to be mostly untainted by that sort of thing.

[deleted]

Re: Stop abusing GitHub stars

#30

Post by [deleted] »

captn3m0 wrote: post #14
JohnTHaller wrote: post #12

It looks like SK Telecom (South Korea phone company) was paying people to sign up for GitHub and star things via a contest for gift cards and such. The project runner being starred, kyungtaak, was apparently complicit in it (according to Google Translate of the GitHub comments). They shut it down once the bad publicity started, deleted the original site promoting it, and archived the GitHub repo.

How’s this any different from all the “Follow on twitter, and RT to enter our Giveaway” promotions that happen?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN