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Caitin
Caitin

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Which metric best measures the popularity of a GitHub repo? Stars, forks, or watchers?

I used an AI-powered querying tool to check the most popular front-end repos on GitHub in 2022.

The result is as follows:
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This tool uses "Stars" to measure a repo's popularity.
But it seems that many developers don't agree. Some people think that a better measurement can be pull requests, number of incoming vs outgoing contributors, dependents (i.e. how many projects consider this project important) and so on.

I asked ChatGPT which metric best measures the popularity of a GitHub repo. It replied that:

The most popular metric for measuring the popularity of a GitHub repo is "Stars," which represents the level of attention and endorsement from users. Additionally, "Forks" and "Watchers" are also commonly used metrics for evaluating the popularity of a repo.

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OSS Insight used to rank repos only by stars. But in September, 2022, they updated their ranking algorithm:

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What do you think? Which metric best measures the popularity of a GitHub repo?

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