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How we lost 54k GitHub stars

Jakub Roztocil on April 15, 2022

Gaining 54k GitHub stars HTTPie for Terminal is celebrating 10 years since the first commit. If you’re unfamiliar with the project, it’...
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Benjamin • Edited

That sucks. I know it's difficult for big projects, but maybe it is time to consider using alternative - more humane - code hosting services. For example, Codeberg, which is a community focused non-profit.

Or, maybe self-host. GitLab and Gitea have come a long way. It's time to stop relying on commercial entities to host your free code.

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Grant

That's a bummer, but it'll be all right. Your commit history, issues and PR's are all there still. People equate "stars" with "likes", but I think that's actually not its purpose (or original purpose). It's like a bookmark for you to easily find it later under your profile. It's sad to me that people equate it with popularity and ask people to star it, as if it gives it a better reputation.

OSS maintainers asking for stars has sort of become YouTube creators asking, "Be sure to slap that like button and subscribe. Hit that bell to be notified of new videos!"

You've built a small empire and done something very few have been able to do. Keep building and you'll get the attention you deserve. Don't sweat the stars. You're already a star in our hearts

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Rob OLeary • Edited

Nice writeup. Its a bummer when something like this happens. It looks like you are back to 12.5k stars, so you bounced back quite well!

Maybe, its a sign to change to another host in the long-run...

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Mike Lockhart

These are great points about the UI for destructive changes. I've created an issue for the GitLab dev team, to surface project and group details when making access changes. In GitLab's case, flipping a project private/public doesn't lose the stars: the project just becomes invisible, and not listed in the users' Starred projects tab until it's made public again.

But for destructive actions the GitLab UI doesn't offer any confirmation or information about potential impacts either. For instance under GitLab's Advanced project settings there are options to Archive, Transfer, or Delete, but with only general warnings, nothing to say "X project members and Y stars will be impacted", or for a Group "X public projects in this group will be made private by the new group's settings" (equally risky would be private projects made public by accident).

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Andrew Abraham

Man, that sucks. I could only imagine how long those 30 minutes must have felt watching the stars disintegrate before you.

Glad to see the project is already back up to over 12k stars.
Its a great tool, especially for people who like to live in the terminal...

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Ben Sinclair

I think you're right in everything except thinking that Github should be more helpful to you since you were a higher-profile project.

It should be a better interface for everyone - I can imagine the same situation where you sent them an email and they replied "ok", and fixed it for you but made some kind of time-and-effort value judgement where they wouldn't do the same for other projects. That's a corporate cloud distopia.

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Rommel C. Manalo

I tweet this long time ago, that everything that Microsoft touches turns to shit. Its like "Hands of Midas" but in opposite way.

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Ernesto Olivares

Same thing happened to me in Aws. I deleted an entire ECS cluster instead a service because two delete buttons were in the same page.

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gkTim

Didn’t know the project before this post. Nice tool! Good Post! Gave a Star. Continue the good work. Thx for your effort!

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Ismael Ramos 🚀 • Edited

@jakubroztocil @sinewalker @moopet is it me, or github implemented your solution because of this?

screenshot

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T "@tnir" N

But it is the better than others. Any alternative you prefer?