Please don't let GitHub become a social media platform (Discussion & Feedback)

[alexitx]

Select Topic Area

General

Body

(For more context, I'm including examples of other bad parts of GitHub which are related to how the feeds, recommendations and homepage affect the platform)

What's wrong with the feeds

Ever since we started getting bits and pieces of social media features implemented, people have made it clear they don't like that, it is not useful for the vast majority, and this is not the right direction GitHub is heading.

Why would most developers, who were used to receiving relevant information about projects they're working on, want to see people's irrelevant stars, repositories made public, and published releases? The "For You" feed is filled with irrelevant content, so anybody who didn't use it just stuck with the original feed. Now we don't even have that.

What's wrong with GitHub as a whole

Almost all of the feed and recommendations have nothing in common with the projects I'm working or my stars. If you open some random project in a language you don't even use, GitHub will start pushing similar repositories down your throat and there's no way to mark them as "not interested" - exactly like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social medias. Likewise, why are things like statuses, sex, personal life information, social accounts, achievements, etc. promoted on a supposedly professional version control platform? You can link a personal portfolio or a resume in your profile if you'd like others to learn more about you. The profile README feels like a afterthought; a band-aid solution to a proposal that was made on friday and due tomorrow. Achievements e.g. "YOLO - Merged a pull request without a review"? Why would you incentivise (especially those who are new to software development) to merge PRs without reviews? Yes, you probably don't need a review for small personal projects, but things like this could incite people to act carelessly in order to get some absolutely pointless badge, instead of promoting best practices.

Proposed solutions

This is a professional software development platform. I assume I'm speaking for most people when I say that we want to get work done easily and efficiently, instead of feeling like scrolling on Twitter.

My proposals for the new feed are: Completely revamp the algorithm for recommendations; Bring back the old, better feed and make it chooseable as the default; Add advanced filters to select precisely what you want to see

Similarly for GitHub as a whole: Please don't treat your users as lab rats. Ask before changing or implementing new features and refrain from implement social media-like features.

I'm open to hearing your thoughts.

[alexitx]

Some feedback from others I think accompanies my thoughts pretty well:

@rabanti-github:
I don't care about "for you" at all. These recommendations may be repos in completely unrelated programming languages, a topic that intersects one of my repos "accidentally", or hot topics that basically are deemed to be hyped for everyone.
No, sorry, this is not YouTube where we consume content. This is code. [...]

@Jappie3:
[...] Github is not social media, stop trying to use fancy algorithms to show me 'stuff that I want' [...]

@mrjones2014 (about the new feed last year, which I gave my feedback on):
Please don't turn GitHub into Facebook.

Please give me an option to completely disable the algorithmic feed and only have the relevant, chronological feed, only from users I follow and repos I participate in.

@Means88:
I only care about people who I'm following, the new feed contains nothing interest me. I would go to "Explore" page if I want to find something new.

@jianxingxuejian:
Can't stand the new changes, I wonder which users need this kind of cluttered homepage that isn't even sorted by time

There even is a community made userscript to bring the old feed back.