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How to track and display profile views on GitHub

rushter.com

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Re: How to track and display profile views on GitHub

#5
post #3

Can we please not normalize this? Vanity tracking at its worst. You don't need to know.

I definitely agree, and believe that this sort of thing sets a very negative example for young folks coming into the industry. Chasing views, starts, and shares is a sure path to burnout and mental health problems that already seem to plague very online tech people.

*[edit] I don't mean to shit on the OPs work or the coolness factor here. I'm just a bit put off by the idea of creating new anxiety levers for people to pull that don't offer much if any real value.

Re: How to track and display profile views on GitHub

#6
post #2

Everything old is new again. I used this same technique on MySpace 15 years ago. I wonder if Github will try to filter that out the same way MySpace did back in the day.

I did some research before writing an article. GitHub started proxying images in 2014, and there are a lot of repositories that use this technique to keep their stats. I think GitHub is OK with that.

Re: How to track and display profile views on GitHub

#7
post #3

Can we please not normalize this? Vanity tracking at its worst. You don't need to know.

I agree, but I think such information should be available to all people. Some people will be doing this anyway, and they can hide this by using a transparent pixel.

Re: How to track and display profile views on GitHub

#8
post #7
post #3

Can we please not normalize this? Vanity tracking at its worst. You don't need to know.

I agree, but I think such information should be available to all people. Some people will be doing this anyway, and they can hide this by using a transparent pixel.

There will also be plenty of people who put images on their profile like this with no interest in tracking the metrics.

Re: How to track and display profile views on GitHub

#9
post #2

Everything old is new again. I used this same technique on MySpace 15 years ago. I wonder if Github will try to filter that out the same way MySpace did back in the day.

Memories! I hid my top 6 and made a 'random friend' thing. It was an image i.e. http://whatever/random-friend.jpg that linked to http://whatever/forward-to-friend. The server served up a random profile picture - and crucially a cookie header that set the friend-id as a cookie that forward-to-friend would use to send you to the corresponding profile. I was _so_ proud of it at the time...

Re: How to track and display profile views on GitHub

#10
post #2

Everything old is new again. I used this same technique on MySpace 15 years ago. I wonder if Github will try to filter that out the same way MySpace did back in the day.

> the same way MySpace did back in the day.

For us that weren't around in MySpace era, how did they do that?

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