GitHub's fake star economy

Just look at how many cool and legit open projects have the star-meter graph in their README.md - so of course people will start measuring against that metric and start gaming it.

I was surprised myself when I suddenly saw a starstruck badge on my profile. I never advertise my projects but I do feel honored when people think that my contributions are useful and stars are an easy way of showing that gratitude. At least I think that's how it was intended. And now someone is breaking that for scraps (or not scraps.)

This is exactly the bs that pushes services to not offer their own logins anymore, now you have to login with FB or GH or $randomFamousSvc instead of the more anonymous "by email" - just happened to me recently when I wanted to use a trial account, but I totally get it - with abuse trust is substituted with control. It's the same everywhere.. even voter ID.

Sorry, that went off track. I guess just don't look at the stars anymore. Wait, no, don't do that, stars are beautiful and so are you if you read all the way to here. Here's a * for you :)

VCs themselves probably suffer from chronic overestimation of their own intelligence, but there just aren't many good signals at the stage of companies they're looking at. No customers, no revenue; often just an idea and hopefully a prototype. GitHub stars are as good of a signal as letters of intent, which is to say: a bad signal, but at least a signal. Other than that, they have to just evaluate what the founders are telling them (generally unrealistically optimistic at best) and whatever market research they can do (which is hard enough for the founders to do for their own product; image doing this for a dozen different companies every day).

Of course GitHub stars are a terrible signal, but the bar for signal quality is just really low.

If you want to make it as an actor today, you need a social media following [1]. It is directly relevant to you getting cast. It also helps you connect with other actors, with producers and directors, etc.

Thing is, this isn't new. before social media, your influence was measured in "tear sheets" [2], basically any published story that you're in. This could be something as simple as going to Cannes or Sundance or even just to the hottest club.

Sports also uses a points system (kind of) but it's meant to reflect ability. Take the NFL, for example. Going from high school to college and college to the NFL, you will have stats relevant to whatever position(s) you play. For a QB it's things like interceptions, passing years, running yards, completed throw percentages, etc. You then have the NFL Combine [3]. This is an intensive camp where certain metrics are taken like how much you can lift, 40 yard dash, etc.

All of this tries to make it a science, or at least quantitative. But what I find funny is that despite all this work, it can still fail spectacularly. Like, being the #1 draft pick for the NFL is kind of a curse [4].

And then there's Tom Brady. For people unfamiliar with American sportsball, Tom Brady is arguably the greatest quarterback in the game's history, having 7 Superbowl rings. Thing is, he was a 6th round draft pick in the 2000 NFL draft. For anyone not familiar with what that means, 6th (and especially 7th) round draft picks are like the bottom of the barrel. You're not expected to take a starting position. You may not even play unless 1-2 people get injured. Nobody expects you to be a great.

[1]: https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/social-media-acto...

[2]: https://avenueagency.wordpress.com/tag/tear-sheet

[3]: https://www.nfl.com/combine

[4]: https://www.si.com/more-sports/2011/01/13/sportscasting-exce...

speak for yourself, I guess? Some people know things in many areas. But even if they are not experts outside of their areas of expertise, they may recognize their limitations in other areas and thus avoid making costly mistakes. This may even be the rule for adults, rather than the exception.