
Chinese repos are ruining the GitHub trending page - balzss
https://medium.com/@balazs.saros/chinese-repos-are-ruining-the-github-trending-page-2eeda45ae1e0
======
ksaj
I do a lot of searches like

> [https://github.com/search](https://github.com/search)?
> l=Common+Lisp&o=desc&q=lisp& s=updated&type=Repositories

and while I often get Chinese results mixed in (not to exclude Japanese and a
few others!), I actually _like_ seeing what people are up to regardless of
their spoken language.

When something interesting shows up, there's an online translator for that.

While there is some value to seeing what is trending in whatever language you
speak, that is a specific filter that gets further and further away from the
reality of what is actually trending on github. Github is all about
_programming_ and not about spoken language, so the filter would be a tad
arbitrary (although maybe someone would be interested in knowing how many Rust
repos are written in Swahili or Cree).

That filter could be a _feature_ , but on a global platform, the Chinese
certainly aren't "ruining" it. They are _integral_ to it.

------
sawaruna
>Repos already have a “language” property funnily enough which is based on the
code contained in it. Similarly they could introduce another property to
detect the natural language of the readme/docs/etc and assign it to the
project. On the trending tab you already have an option to only browse
projects in a specific programming language so you could also set this as
well. A “worldwide” option could be the default. I don’t want to hide other
people’s projects.

Sounds good to me. Post title is a bit too strongly worded though.

~~~
balzss
Based on the comments both here and on reddit that seem to be the case. Do you
have a suggestion for a better title?

~~~
sawaruna
Not really, but better to not frame the page as being "ruined". Something
about Github's popularity in China making the case for language options or
something, maybe.

------
balzss
Hi everyone, I'm the author. I'm curious what others think about this. I'm not
sure if I'm the only one who feels that it's a problem so let me know if you
have something to add or correct.

~~~
__warlord__
Why would it be a problem to write code and documentation in other languages?

And the way you word your title is a bit too much don't your think?

~~~
balzss
Have you read the article? Based on your response it feels like you didn't
because I added a "disclaimer" section to the top just to address that it's
not a problem with foreign repos but with the UX of the trending page.

Edit: the whole article is about this but the disclaimer is there to make this
clear as soon as possible. Maybe the title is controversial without context
but I really hoped that people read the whole thing before forming an opinion.

