You can not select more than 25 topics
Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.
54 lines
2.4 KiB
54 lines
2.4 KiB
6 years ago
|
+++
|
||
|
|
title = "Dear Github Maintainers"
|
||
|
|
date = 2016-01-15
|
||
|
|
categories = "code"
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
[taxonomies]
|
||
|
|
tags = ["github", "comments", "en-au"]
|
||
|
|
+++
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
A rebuttal to "Dear Github".
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
<!-- more -->
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
So recently in Reddit, there is this thread going around about
|
||
|
|
[Dear Github](https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github),
|
||
|
|
which points some problems with Github issues pages.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Thing is, most of the problems are not problems with Github itself, but by the
|
||
|
|
community that grew around it.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
For example, the most annoying one is the huge amount of "+1" in comments. I've
|
||
|
|
seen this and yes, it's annoying as hell. Lots of people come around and post
|
||
|
|
a simple "+1" instead of really contributing. This is *not* an issue with
|
||
|
|
Github, it is an issue with the community that instead of helping fixing a
|
||
|
|
problem, thinks that posting "+1" to point that it is important to them is
|
||
|
|
actual help. It isn't. I've seen issues with so many "+1" that if everyone
|
||
|
|
who posted a "+1" actually submitted a single change, the bug would be fixed
|
||
|
|
with spare lines.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
(Unpopular opinion: Github should have support for "+1", but actually *ban* it.
|
||
|
|
It is unhelpful. If it's important to you, you should at least give a try to
|
||
|
|
fix the issue instead of "+1" and giving yourself a pat in the back for
|
||
|
|
"helping out".)
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Issues missing important information surely is a problem, but that's why you
|
||
|
|
need to triage your issues. Is there any missing information? You can reply to
|
||
|
|
the poster. "But why should I ask when I can put a form for the user to fill
|
||
|
|
issues?" Dude, seriously? You're worried that you will lose 30 seconds of your
|
||
|
|
life to ask something? Why don't you want to talk to your community, why you
|
||
|
|
don't want to teach people how to properly report errors? Is it that hard to
|
||
|
|
be part of a community?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
But the hurting point is the "if Github was open source, we would fix this
|
||
|
|
ourselves". [Gitorious](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitorious) was open
|
||
|
|
source and never had that much contribution from the community, to the point
|
||
|
|
it was closed and moved to Gitlab. So I have to ask: If Bitbucket implemented
|
||
|
|
this, would all of you move to it? My guess is an indignant "No", because
|
||
|
|
Github means exposure while all the other public Git sites are not.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
To me, the whole list is not a list of problems with Github itself, but a
|
||
|
|
problem with the open source (in the general, broad term) community that's
|
||
|
|
growing around Github. We should worry about building communities, not building
|
||
|
|
code with 400 forks, 1000s of "+1" comments and a single maintainer.
|