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We lost 54k GitHub stars

httpie.io

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Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#521

Post by lucideer »

There's so much focus on the UX here to alert you to a destructive action, but I haven't seen anyone mention this: why does Github even delete stars, and why on earth is it permanent?

It seems like a temporary UX hack put in place because some tricky implementation detail handling stars on private repos. Like they said "we'll fix that later" and then the warning message stayed.

In a well designed system, making a repo public/private would be a switch where full state is retained back and forth.

I mean, it's kinda hypothetical but stars aren't even completely useless in a private repo (for a sufficiently large set of users with access).

I'd go further and say that even the UX around the destructive act of deleting a repo shouldn't be necessary: that seems undo-able. Overwriting would still need a warning (creating a repo in a namespace that previously contained data) as would anything involving losing access (deleting an org, freeing it up to the community at large), but not needing it for repo deletion-a relatively common action-would go a long way toward reducing "autopilot".

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#522

Post by MrBlueIncognito »

rob74 wrote: post #501
wpietri wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you read "The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error'". You'd learn a lot. https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Understanding-Human-Error... My view is that expecting humans to stop making mistakes is much less effective than fixing the systems that amplify those mistakes into large, irreversible impacts.

But still, I also share the opinion that GitHub's UX for dangerous actions on a repository is currently already best in class, so blaming them for your mistakes is pretty unfair. To make your repo private, you have to: - click "change visibility" in the "Danger Zone" area of the settings. - select "make private" with an additional warning shown that you will lose all stars and watchers. Ok, maybe it should mention ho…

> And yes, sometimes it is important to expect humans to not make mistakes. For example, at railway crossings. Even if you drove over it 100 times and no train came, the 101th time you may still die if you don't check for a train before crossing.

For somebody going through a railway crossing, yes, they shouldn't allow themselves to be prone any mistakes there. However, for the people involved in the construction of the railway crossing, they should certainly expect everyone to screw up and scrutinize the safety. We don't want to leave anything affecting livelihoods to chance.

"On average, each year around 400 people in the European Union and over 300 in the United States are killed in level crossing accidents."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_crossing#Safety

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#523

Post by mro_name »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #111
vaishnavsm wrote: post #70

I really like this post. While the author clearly feels bad about the fact that they've lost his community and that GitHub didn't restore it (which is honestly what any of us would've felt under similar circumstances), they're also focusing towards the future and using their personal experience as a parable all of us can learn from. Lesson 1 on UI design I think is really important. I often think scary popup boxes ar…

I specifically dislike the "Lessons" section, as it throws all the blame on github and doesn't mention the seemingly obvious advice: "make sure you're not on autopilot when taking potentially dangerous actions, on github or any website". Yes, GitHub probably should show the stars in the warning UI, and hopefully that will prevent some of these mistakes. But GitHub makes it pretty hard to make this mistake already - t…

Yes, and as Don Norman puts it, Design is mostly on how to make errors non-catastrophic. No design nor training ever will abolish them.

Humans err.

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#524

Post by Agentlien »

notRobot wrote: post #425
Agentlien wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen some software, can't remember which, that forces you to type the name of the project you're deleting to confirm. That's made me think twice.

GitHub does that

Considering the context I'm amazed I didn't realize that was where I'd seen it.

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#527

Post by fourseventy »

davedx wrote: post #508

Contrarian opinion here. While things can always be better the Github UX is good enough here. I am reminded of an old phrase: “A bad workman always blames his tools.” At some point you just need to accept responsibility for your actions and stop blaming others.

Couldn't agree more. The author not only messes up his own repo while blaming the GitHub UI, he proceeds to then whine that GitHub employees won't restore his data from a backup.

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#528

Post by axiomsEnd »

tdfx wrote: post #468
react_burger38 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea - fixing systems that amplify mistakes into large, irreversible impacts-- is why I am against alcohol, marijuana and other mental-state altering drugs for recreational purposes. (I'm not talking about people who really need pain relief from cancer, amphetamines for ADHD, etc.) If no one in the world drank, smoked pot, or did drugs, how much better off would we all be? 100,000 deaths come from alcohol use ev…

I'm scared to see what your sanitized world would look like. Some of the most interesting art, music, and personal perspective has come from the consumption of the substances you deride as unnecessary and destructive.

How much art, science and deep, personal perspectives were lost due to abuse and death stemming from substance abuse? In case of certain substances (like alcohol) we have rather hard statistics about it's overal impact on physical and mental condition of society. Slow change from alcohol to safer alternatives (ex. cannabis) is probably one of the best trends in current times.

Re: We lost 54k GitHub stars

#529

Post by sorokod »

terrymunro wrote: post #439
sorokod wrote: post #404

None of the "Lessons learned" are of personal nature - unbelievable.

I know, I'm seething at how many people are supporting this person. I would be on his side too if he started with accepting his part in this and took responsibility but he clearly blames GitHub for everything and learned nothing from this. Such arrogance, let's see if HTTPie will have a nice warning every time you try to do a http delete command. I've done something similar to this and took responsibility. I accident…

Your comment about HTTPie DELETE (or any other verb that changes the system state) points at the exact problem: what is the right balance between giving the user the power and preventing the user from shooting themselves in the foot.

For example, should "my brain switched to auto-pilot mode" be seriously considered as a risk to be mitigated?

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