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GitHub's fake star economy

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Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#331

Post by manquer »

matt_kantor wrote: post #193
bsuvc wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think I have ever used stars in making a decision to use a library and I don't understand why anyone would I do it all the time, whenever there are competing libraries to choose among. It's a heuristic that saves me time. If one library has 1,000 stars and the other has 15, I'm going to default to the 1,000 stars. I also look at download count and release frequency. Basically I don't want to use some obscur…

> If one library has 1,000 stars and the other has 15, I'm going to default to the 1,000 stars. Will you continue to do this after reading TFA?

Why not? Buying stars is also a positive signal on commitment.

i.e. if the maintainer is serious enough to buy stars, is not in theory likely to spend time /money in maintaining /improving the project also ?.

Presumably he wouldn't just want fake users but also real users, which is a signal than a just purely hobby project, that is vibe-coded on a whim over a weekend and abandoned?

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#332

Post by edm0nd »

Silamoth wrote: post #233

Genuine question: Who uses stars on GitHub? Even if I use a library or tool, it’s never once occurred to me to give it a star on GitHub. Is this a real thing people do? And if so, why?

I star something that I think is cool and also so I can find it easier if I forget the name of it I can just go look at my Stars and re-find it.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#334

Post by creesch »

whatisthiseven wrote: post #106

I don't think I have ever used stars in making a decision to use a library and I don't understand why anyone would. Here are the things I look at in order: * last commit date. Newer is better * age. old is best if still updating. New is not great but tolerable if commits aren't rapid * issues. Not the count, mind you, just looking at them. How are they handled, what kind of issues are lingering open. * some of the co…

> * last commit date. Newer is better

To be honest, these days I have more faith in an application or library with a moderate development pace where maybe the last commit wasn't 2 seconds ago co-authored by claude (in the most blatant examples).

The same is true for amount of commits, the type of commits, release cadence and the amount of fixes and hotfixes in releases. I don't feel like being a glorified alpha tester so I look for maturity in a project.

Which more often than not means that, yes there needs be activity. But, it is also fine if it was two days ago and there is a clear sign of the same pattern over a longer period. Combined with a stable release cycle, sane versioning and clear changelogs that aren't just a list of the last 10 commit messages.

On your point of stars, I think they used to be a valid metric in a similar category. Namely, community behind the software. But it has been a while since that has been true. It certainly hasn't been for a while, ever since I saw these star tracking graphs pop up on repos I knew that there was no sense in paying attention to them anymore.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#335

Post by roarcher »

kibwen wrote: post #169
mauvehaus wrote: post #124

Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…

[flagged]

I used to be afflicted with the notion that wealth was correlated with a person's intelligence and work ethic. I was miraculously cured when I went to work for a startup that had to periodically impress VCs to raise capital.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#336

Post by creesch »

rpdillon wrote: post #226
whatisthiseven wrote: post #106

I don't think I have ever used stars in making a decision to use a library and I don't understand why anyone would. Here are the things I look at in order: * last commit date. Newer is better * age. old is best if still updating. New is not great but tolerable if commits aren't rapid * issues. Not the count, mind you, just looking at them. How are they handled, what kind of issues are lingering open. * some of the co…

Agree! My longstanding metric uses just two values: * Most recent commit * Total number of commits This might have to die in the era of AI, but it's served me well for a long time. Rather than how many people are paying attention, it tries to measure the effort put in.

> This might have to die in the era of AI,

Sadly that is probably true.

At the very least I'd add release cadence to it and the quality of releases. Mature, good software will have hotfixes and patch releases every now and then. But not in every release and certainly not 50% of the changes. In the same sense I will often look at the effort put in changelogs. If they took the effort of putting things in category, writing about possible breaking changes, etc it is a possible indicator of some level of quality. At the very least I will have a lot more faith in software with good changelogs compared to something that is just a list of the last N commit messages.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#337

Post by comprev »

mauvehaus wrote: post #124

Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…

These days many DJs are booked on their social media following not their skills or musical knowledge.

The market is completely flooded and promotors cannot practically sift through the sheer volume of mixes published online -- so they go by Internet points instead.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#338

Post by tombert »

mauvehaus wrote: post #124

Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…

I've gotten recruiters reach out for jobs because of my fairly high Hacker News karma. This isn't speculation on my end, they actually told me that.

I agree it's idiotic; I'm quite confident that it wouldn't be that hard to cheat this system, and even if there absolutely no way to cheat the system, it's not like Hacker News points translate to smartness; my most upvoted posts have basically nothing to do with software engineering.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#339

Post by groundzeros2015 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #271
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this isn’t quite your point. But for the portfolio approach to be plausible you have to play as if all of them will succeed, and only later sort out the failures. If you mentally say “well 90% fail so I’ll just throw in this dog shit to see what happens” then you increase the failure rate.

Yeah I can see that. Another thing I was thinking as I was re-reading this thread is that for some VCs the fact that you can game your GH star count might in fact read as a positive signal. It shows you're willing able to play a kind of vicious PR game to get popularity. Again, VCs not interested in pure technical excellence or geek "cred". They likely want you if you're the kind of person who can stand in front of a…

I think this is accurate. It’s a kind of promotion and commitment acumen.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#340

Post by MASNeo »

kibwen wrote: post #169
mauvehaus wrote: post #124

Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…

[flagged]

VCs have no money and few have the money to manage the money entrusted in them. The people that give the money have the money because they ask people to do more with less. In that pinch, one might understand how VCs look to proxies, and often fail to find great ones but at least then it wasn’t expense. Ever tried to sell something to a VC except equity - it’s an educating experience?
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