

The Hacker News effect - Javve
https://medium.com/open-source/7d4fa461a9

======
pessimism

        As my first open source project, I would have been happy
        if it got ten watchers. Now it got 439 which meant a
        great responsibility.
    

This part really rang true to me. I’m working on a hobby project on GitHub I
think is going to be great, important, and well-liked some day (as everyone
does with their own, I’m sure), but I _really_ like that I can fly under the
radar for the moment. At least until some asshole links to it somewhere high-
traffic. :)

I am _this_ close to having nightmares about a deluge of poorly-worded issues
and pull requests with the most asinine remarks about my project. The fact
that there doesn’t seem to be a proper mechanism for managing people like that
on GitHub only exacerbates this fear. Funnily, this is also something I have
to deal with withing the context of _my own_ project concept, it being
community-based. It almost makes you long for something that plugs into
GitHub’s own system to make this scale.

I would actually love to read an article about how GitHub projects scale—not
the code itself, but the managerial task of managing Issues, Pull Requests,
and entitled users. I don’t recall anyone ever doing that. The just-released
django-admin-bootstrap has already been inundated with feedback—which is great
and all, but seems to be managed much like your e-mails, lest you want to end
up in a position where you can’t keep up.

Maybe this could be the occasion for you to do that, reporting live from the
battlefield?

~~~
shrikant
Why not use Bitbucket or someplace else that offers free private repos?

~~~
pessimism
It _was_ private at first, but frankly, as I am sure bloggers with an
effective audience of zero like I can attest, the chance of serendipitous fame
and popularity is so infinitesimal in this digital age that I consider public
repos for obscure GitHub accounts tantamount to private. Private repos for
people like I are mainly for commercial, license-encumbered, and sensitive
projects.

If you’re some sort of wizard like Kenneth Reitz, it is obviously a different
matter. I am not Kenneth Reitz.

It is also tremendously helpful to be able to link to my code directly for
help, and believe it or not, doing this has yet to launch me into inadvertent
open-source stardom. :)

The same can be said for my Twitter, Pinterest, GitHub, Tumblr accounts, my
blog, and so on. It’s more of a general principle at hand, I think.

------
GotAnyMegadeth
What you need to do now is start a lawsuit against your friend and HN,
demanding a removal of all related posts and comments, saying your project's
privacy has been compromised. Then you can boost your exposure with the
Streisand effect.

------
npsimons
Just to go a little meta-meta (I never meta I didn't like ;), I find it
interesting to contrast this response to others who have experienced the
Hacker News Effect, especially those who come on HN and respond directly to
critics. This response was level-headed, humble, and above all, professional.
And all that for an (unpaid?) open source project.

Whereas there have been some people who show up with attitudes that, frankly,
make me question how they still have customers . . .

~~~
kmfrk
There was a time where stories like "Something completely inane happened, here
is the break-down" peaked, which rendered a lot of people practically allergic
to post-game analyses like this.

That doesn't mean that all of them are bad, and I really liked this article,
and hope to see more.

~~~
npsimons
I could see that; geeks/engineers can be prone to over-analysis. That being
said, I liked this article and comments too; clear, concise and refreshingly
transparent. Some of the worst post-game analyses I've seen seem to be where
details are few (bad on the OP), then speculation occurs (bad on the
commenters), and worst is when the OP comes and throws a tantrum (or similar)
dragging the speculation down to a flamewar (although usually a moderate one
by my standards).

------
edent
Interesting. And similar to what I discovered. I graphed my two most recent
experiences being on the front page of HN:
[http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/whats-the-front-page-of-
hack...](http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/whats-the-front-page-of-hackernews-
worth/)

While is is fun to see 30K visitors in a day, it's daunting and can play merry
hell with your hosting bill if you're not careful.

Still, probably better than languishing in obscurity!

------
oezaxs
Awesome story and true, I know that I will be following his progrss.

