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GitHub Star History Graph

star-history.com

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Re: GitHub Star History Graph

#21

Post by dtolnay »

I made a CLI version of a star history grapher for my own use, because I wasn't happy with the granularity of the graphs available in the various online incarnations of this.

https://github.com/dtolnay/star-history

Here is a side-by-side comparison of graphs generated by star-history.com vs my tool: https://github.com/dtolnay/star-history/issues/8

You can distinguish a lot finer structure in my graph: coinciding with individual blog posts with not as much reach as something on Hacker News front page. That structure is almost entirely concealed in star-history.com by the cartoony graphs.

Re: GitHub Star History Graph

#22

Post by jcheng »

slimsag wrote: post #13
matsemann wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't want to include trackers because of privacy. But it would be nice to see which pages are accessed, and from where the visitors are coming. I don't need more than that, and that can be gathered from the access logs.

In my opinion, analytics should be minimal, 100% anonymous, aggregated, and open to the public - otherwise it’s spying. I use a self-hosted Plausible analytics server to implement this[0] across all my websites, so it's all public and you get to see exactly what I see[1][2]. [0] https://hexops.com/privacy/ [1] https://opendata.hexops.com/devlog.hexops.com [2] https://opendata.hexops.com/machengine.org

I’m with you on minimal, 100% anonymous, and aggregated, but why does the data need to be open to the public to not be spying? Genuinely curious, you’ve clearly thought about this a lot.

Re: GitHub Star History Graph

#24

Post by dabeeeenster »

woodruffw wrote: post #10
dabeeeenster wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it does...

It looks like they're using the `starred_at` timestamp, which is indeed provided by GitHub's stars API[1]. Edit: the code in question[2]. [1]: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/activity/starring#custom-med... [2]: https://github.com/bytebase/star-history/blob/c8c66678db8015...

Ah my mistake! Thanks!

Re: GitHub Star History Graph

#25

Post by irrational »

viraptor wrote: post #7

Slightly related, but... what is it with stars? I've never starred a repo and don't understand why I would want to. Yet it seems to be a popularity contest people care about for some reason, even though it correlates strongly with forks/issues/prs so you get the same idea about usage from those. Does it go at all beyond a "like", or am I just too old to get it?

I use it as a bookmark. Under my own account I can find the repos I have starred.

Re: GitHub Star History Graph

#26

Post by slimsag »

jcheng wrote: post #22
slimsag wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, analytics should be minimal, 100% anonymous, aggregated, and open to the public - otherwise it’s spying. I use a self-hosted Plausible analytics server to implement this[0] across all my websites, so it's all public and you get to see exactly what I see[1][2]. [0] https://hexops.com/privacy/ [1] https://opendata.hexops.com/devlog.hexops.com [2] https://opendata.hexops.com/machengine.org

I’m with you on minimal, 100% anonymous, and aggregated, but why does the data need to be open to the public to not be spying? Genuinely curious, you’ve clearly thought about this a lot.

There are only two reasons it would need to be private:

(1) you're collecting data where if it was public, people would be outraged. That's spying.

(2) you believe the data is anonymous and valuable, but only you / your group should benefit from the insights it provides. You're afraid someone else is going to 'take your ideas' and execute them better than you can.

Point 1 is ethically wrong, in my view. Point 2 is not ethically wrong, but IMO means what you are just trying to run a monopoly on an idea. That's fine, people do it all the time, especially companies - but I think this is wrong for the progress of humanity overall and I dislike it.

Re: GitHub Star History Graph

#27

Post by est31 »

woodruffw wrote: post #10
dabeeeenster wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it does...

It looks like they're using the `starred_at` timestamp, which is indeed provided by GitHub's stars API[1]. Edit: the code in question[2]. [1]: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/activity/starring#custom-med... [2]: https://github.com/bytebase/star-history/blob/c8c66678db8015...

Yeah and therefore, it's not the actual history because it only tracks the dates of when the people who have currently starred it have started starring it. It's a detail, but if someone unstars, it will be treated as if that person had never starred the project in the first place. Or in other terms, whatever graph is shown, you will never see it go down.

Re: GitHub Star History Graph

#28

Post by onionisafruit »

viraptor wrote: post #7

Slightly related, but... what is it with stars? I've never starred a repo and don't understand why I would want to. Yet it seems to be a popularity contest people care about for some reason, even though it correlates strongly with forks/issues/prs so you get the same idea about usage from those. Does it go at all beyond a "like", or am I just too old to get it?

It makes me feel good when I see one of my projects getting stars. When I star a project it is with the hope that another maintainer will have a similar good feeling.

Re: GitHub Star History Graph

#29

Post by alcover »

I get many stars on my last project but no issues or PR. It feels quite lonely and, more importantly, I can't know if my work is going in a good direction.

I think people mainly use stars as bookmark.

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