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GitHub's fake star economy

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Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#21

Post by luke5441 »

Topfi wrote: post #4

I don't know what is more, for lack of a better word, pathetic, buying stars/upvotes/platform equivalent or thinking of oneself as a serious investor and using something like that as a metric guiding your decision making process. I'd give a lot of credit to Microsoft and the Github team if they went on a major ban/star removal wave of affected repos, akin to how Valve occasionally does a major sweep across CSGO2 bann…

The problem is that if this is the game now, you need to play it. I'm trying to get a new open source project off the ground and now I wonder if I need to buy fake stars. Or buy the cheapest kind of fake stars for my competitors so they get deleted.

For Microsoft this is another kind of sunk cost, so idk how much incentive they have to fix this situation.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#22

Post by superdisk »

luke5441 wrote: post #21
Topfi wrote: post #4

I don't know what is more, for lack of a better word, pathetic, buying stars/upvotes/platform equivalent or thinking of oneself as a serious investor and using something like that as a metric guiding your decision making process. I'd give a lot of credit to Microsoft and the Github team if they went on a major ban/star removal wave of affected repos, akin to how Valve occasionally does a major sweep across CSGO2 bann…

The problem is that if this is the game now, you need to play it. I'm trying to get a new open source project off the ground and now I wonder if I need to buy fake stars. Or buy the cheapest kind of fake stars for my competitors so they get deleted. For Microsoft this is another kind of sunk cost, so idk how much incentive they have to fix this situation.

An open source project really shouldn't be something you need to "get off the ground." If it provides value then people will naturally use it.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#23

Post by 3form »

sunrunner wrote: post #19
3form wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stars have fallen to the classic problem of becoming a goal and stopping being a good metric. This can apply to your measure just as well: issues can also be gamed to be opened, closed and responded to quickly, especially now with LLMs.

Was it ever a good metric? A star from another account costs nothing and conveys nothing about the sincerity, knowledge, importance or cultural weight of the star giver. As a signal it's as weak as 'hitting that like button'. If the number of stars are in the thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, that might correlate with a serious project. But that should be visible by real, costly activity such as…

There isn't just "good metric" in vacuum - it was a good metric of exactly the popularity that you mentioned. But stars becoming an object of desire is what killed it for that purpose. Perhaps now they are a "good metric" of combined interest and investment in the project, but what they're measuring is just not useful anymore.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#24

Post by msdz »

apples_oranges wrote: post #14

I look at the starts when choosing dependencies, it's a first filter for sure. Good reminder that everything gets gamed given the incentives.

> I look at the starts when choosing dependencies, it's a first filter for sure.

Unfortunately I still look at them, too, out of habit: The project or repo's star count _was_ a first filter in the past, and we must keep in mind it no longer is.

> Good reminder that everything gets gamed given the incentives.

Also known as Goodhart's law [1]: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".

Essentially, VCs screwed this one up for the rest of us, I think?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#25

Post by logicallee »

dafi70 wrote: post #3

Honest question: how can VCs consider the 'star' system reliable? Users who add stars often stop following the project, so poorly maintained projects can have many stars but are effectively outdated. A better system, but certainly not the best, would be to look at how much "life" issues have, opening, closing (not automatic), and response times. My project has 200 stars, and I struggle like crazy to update regularly…

>Honest question: how can VCs consider the 'star' system reliable?

Founders need the ability to get traction, so if a VC gets a pitch and the project's repo has 0 stars, that's a strong signal that this specific team is just not able to put themselves out there, or that what they're making doesn't resonate with anyone.

When I mentioned that a small feature I shared got 3k views when I just mentioned it on Reddit, then investors' ears perked right up and I bet you're thinking "I wonder what that is, I'd like to see that!" People like to see things that are popular.

By the way, congrats on 200 stars on your project, I think that is definitely a solid indicator of interest and quality, and I doubt investors would ignore it.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#26

Post by Topfi »

Miraltar wrote: post #13
Topfi wrote: post #4

I don't know what is more, for lack of a better word, pathetic, buying stars/upvotes/platform equivalent or thinking of oneself as a serious investor and using something like that as a metric guiding your decision making process. I'd give a lot of credit to Microsoft and the Github team if they went on a major ban/star removal wave of affected repos, akin to how Valve occasionally does a major sweep across CSGO2 bann…

Citing Valve as a model for handling cheating is not what I'd have reached for.

Honest question, which companies handle the process better given it is a trade-off? Yes, VAC is not as iron-clad as kernel level solutions can be, but the latter is overly invasive for many users. I'd argue neither is the objectively right or better approach here and Valves approach of longer term data collection and working on ML solutions that have the potential to catch even those cheating methods currently able to bypass kernel level anti-cheat is a good step.

On Github stars, I'd argue they are the most suitable comparison, as all the funny business regarding stars should be, if at all, detectable by Github directly and ideally, bans would have the biggest deterrent effect, if they happened in larger waves, allowing the community to see who did engage in fraudulent behaviour.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#27

Post by anant-singhal »

Seen this happen first-hand with mid-to-large open source projects that sometimes "sponsor" hackathons, literally setting a task to "star the repo" to be eligible.

It’s supposed to get people to actually try your product. If they like it, they star it. Simple.

At that point, forcing the action just inflates numbers and strips them of any meaning.

Gaming stars to set it as a positive signal for the product to showcase is just SHIT.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#28

Post by tomaytotomato »

est wrote: post #8
Lapel2742 wrote: post #5

I do not look at the stars. I look at the list of contributors, their activities and the bug reports / issues.

> I look at the list of contributors Specifically if those avatars are cute animie girls.

> Specifically if those avatars are cute anime girls.

I know you are half joking/not joking, but this is definitely a golden signal.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#29

Post by elashri »

I usually use stars as a bookmark list to visit later (which I rarely do). I probably would need to stop doing that and use my self-hosted "Karkeep" instance for github projects as well.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#30

Post by sunrunner »

3form wrote: post #23
sunrunner wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it ever a good metric? A star from another account costs nothing and conveys nothing about the sincerity, knowledge, importance or cultural weight of the star giver. As a signal it's as weak as 'hitting that like button'. If the number of stars are in the thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, that might correlate with a serious project. But that should be visible by real, costly activity such as…

There isn't just "good metric" in vacuum - it was a good metric of exactly the popularity that you mentioned. But stars becoming an object of desire is what killed it for that purpose. Perhaps now they are a "good metric" of combined interest and investment in the project, but what they're measuring is just not useful anymore.

Yeah, I'd agree with this. I always thought of a star indicating only that a person (or account, generally) had an active interest in another project, either through being directly related or just from curiosity. Which can sort of work as a proxy for interesting, important or active, but not accurately.
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