
More contributions on your profile - cheshire137
https://github.com/blog/2173-more-contributions-on-your-profile
======
Ruud-v-A
It is good to see the streak go. To quote Jeff Atwood, “If I have learned
anything from the Internet, it is this: be very, very careful when you put a
number next to someone's name. Because people will do whatever it takes to
make that number go up.” I hope this move helps focussing a bit more on
quality over quantity.

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/because-reading-is-
fundamental...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/because-reading-is-
fundamental-2/)

~~~
ericjang
What about HN karma?

~~~
tikhonj
HN used to show the average number of votes/post on your profile and it
certainly affected my posting habits. It made me less likely to carry on
conversations in the comments or post on stories that either had too much
activity or had been on the front page for too long.

There were some benefits too (I started writing more substantial comments),
but the net effect had some unintended problems, so I'm pretty happy they got
rid of that metric.

Karma has some problems too, and could no doubt do with some adjustments, but
I think that it's more useful to have it than not.

~~~
AndrewHampton
I mostly agree. The one thing I really miss is a bookmarklet I made that would
highlight the top five posts on a comments page. This was especially useful
for quickly finding the gems on pages with hundreds of comments. I wish there
was an easy way to discover highly voted comments deeper in the threads.

~~~
p4wnc6
I generally don't find heavily up voted stuff too useful because it represents
the HN monoculture / groupthink.

I'd rather highlight comments that are controversial: they have been voted on
a large number of times, with nearly 50% up vote and 50% down vote.

Those comments at least usually represent an interesting diff from either what
I already think or what is stock monoculture canon on HN.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Yep. I try to work from the bottom up on threads likely to have group-think.
The troll stuff is usually grayed out by the time I get to it. The answers
with little info are easy to skim over. That gets to the dissenting opinions
quickly.

------
fuzionmonkey
I actually don't like this change.

Private contributions don't benefit the greater community unless the project
is eventually open sourced.

The contribution graph was a nice way to show off how much one contributes to
open source, thereby encouraging folks to contribute to open source projects.
It's a vanity metric in the first place, so why not use it to help motivate
more contributions to open source software?

~~~
busterarm
It also makes it somewhat obvious if you quit or got fired from a job (that
uses github).

You don't get green boxes for repositories you no longer have access to.

~~~
shampine
Only if you remove your work email from your account. I still have green boxes
for things I don't have access to. But I made sure to leave my work email in
my account settings, if you remove it, then you lose all the green boxes.

~~~
chris_7
Do you mean that the committer email is used? (so, if you use your personal
email on your work .gitconfig, you're fine already)

~~~
shampine
Yes, or if you you use the hidden <user_email>@users.noreply.github.com.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
I'm going to miss streaks. I don't think it's important that you could
technically abuse them with an auto-committer, but it's not like streaks are
competetive or anything. They're just a tool to encourage you to contribute to
FOSS every day.

(rewrote this comment to provide more substance)

~~~
hk__2
> They're just a tool to encourage you to contribute to FOSS every day.

The “every day” is a problem. Contributing to FOSS is a good thing, but
encouraging people to write code every single day can lead to unhealthy
habits.

> but it's not like streaks are competetive or anything

There are, just like your number of commits or your number of followers.

~~~
nv-vn
Writing code every day doesn't necessarily mean doing more than a few short
lines. I like to think of it as a mental exercise, like how solving puzzles
every day helps you think better. Also, there are days where I have kept a
streak just by documenting something or writing up issues of a repository,
which are things that don't involve programming but are still useful skill
related to programming (and are much more relaxed than havong to write 100
lines of code for some project).

------
steveklabnik
I'm really glad to see this change, for similar reasons expressed elsewhere in
this thread.

Next up, GitHub, is doing a better job of determining what is a
"contribution". Specifically, issue triage doesn't count as contribution. If I
open an issue, I get a contribution, but if I close an issue, I don't. I do a
lot of issue triage, and the lack of symmetry always bugged me: if someone
opens up an invalid bug report, and I do the triage work, determine that bug
was already fixed on master, and close it, they get a contribution, but I
don't!

In other words, once you start quantifying what is and isn't a contribution,
you also start to quantify what kind of labor is valued and not valued. I'd
like to see some kind of revision to these rules that makes sure people who do
valuable work are getting recognized for it.

------
zuck9
I love the pace of changes at GitHub after the "Dear GitHub" letter, it feels
like they woke up from years-long hibernation.

~~~
bad_user
Did they address anything in that letter?

~~~
zuck9
Yep, all the three major issues have been mostly addressed:
[https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github](https://github.com/dear-
github/dear-github)

~~~
cyphar
Have they addressed not being able to add custom text when someone goes to the
new issue tab?

~~~
rndstr
If you are talking about templates, then yes:
[https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull-request-
template...](https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull-request-templates)

~~~
cyphar
I wasn't. The third thing in the "Dear GitHub" letter was that people wanted
to make the "Please check the CONTRIBUTING.md" customisable.

------
akerl_
As somebody who enjoyed having the streak to self-motivate, I started reading
this post super-excited: a common complaint I've heard about streaks was the
requirement to open-source, and I know lots of people who like to code but
wanted the freedom to experiment without their code being scrutinized.

Then I got to the loss of the commit streak counter. The main impact there is
that it's now not reasonably possible for me to track my streak anymore, since
GitHub only serves up 366 squares. So what they've effectively done for me is
remove that little bit of excitement that can help motivate me to improve my
skills when I'd otherwise slack off.

I'm going to see what I need to do to get the calculation for longer streaks,
but it seems likely it'll have to be something custom that relies on my local
filesystem for git data, which is annoying.

~~~
Scea91
You are not taking a single day off in a year?

~~~
mcbits
I've brushed my teeth every single day for almost a year now. Maybe it's time
for a day off before I get burned out on toothbrushing? If someone sees coding
a bit every day as a healthy habit, a great way to start the day, I'm not sure
why there should be anything wrong with never taking a day off from it.

------
minimaxir
I was about to say "if private repo contributions count toward the code
streaks, then someone could write a commit-bot to artificially inflate their
code streak completely undetected."

But the code streak is being removed too, which conveniently makes this
potential loophole a nonissue! (However, it wouldn't surprise me if commit
bots are used regardless to give an impression of coding-every-day on the
graph.)

~~~
sytse
Is there a risk that people still want a very green profile? With private
repos you can use a commit bot without getting caught. I think public
information should be based on public commits.

~~~
aavotins
Why is it a risk? If you're applying for a job and potential employers see
your all-green contribution graph, there is a very high chance they'll ask you
to elaborate on that. At least now it is possible to actually show metrics for
writing code that cannot be published or open sourced. Unfortunately quite a
few recruiters care about it(because being a rockstar on github is a trend),
but the initial screening process would filter out those with faked commit
graphs.

------
cyphar
I think that the fact that GitHub doesn't count pushing to non-master branches
as "contributing to free software" is quite silly. If I do a lot of work on a
feature branch and it isn't merged, it doesn't count as "work". Not that I
really care about imaginary green internet squares.

------
hiby007
>Now that every paid plan includes unlimited private repositories, you can
experiment all you want in private and still add to your contribution graph.
For more information, read our help guide for toggling private contributions
on your profile.

I think this can also be used to show fake contribution within private repos
with a bot like these
[https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti](https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti)
it becomes easy to show more activity without doing much work.

------
swalsh
The private repository visibility is great. Not showing streak count though
super sucks, I'm midway on my best personal streak I've ever had. It may not
be much to some people, but to me making progress on my personal project 67
days in a row was a huge motivator. On days when things aren't going great, I
still try to do some work because heck I'm not going to end a 67-day streak
just because I had a bad day.

------
andy_ppp
Hmmm. This does not help those of us doing work on code hosted in places other
than GitHub and entrenches their position as the default system for managing
software. It's tempting to game the system as well, setting up a private repo
that I can commit to automatically every day.

I don't think either of these things are positive!

------
p4wnc6
I'm sad they still don't provide an option to _hide all contributions_. There
is a huge difference between presenting all contributions in an immediately
visible chart smack on someone's landing page vs. tacitly allowing the "same
data" to be public but requiring people to do a lot of work to actually track
down a given user's public contributions if they are so interested.

I don't mind really if someone wants to do that work. If third party sites pop
up that do that work and turn it into visualizations, that's OK too, because
you can always dispute the accuracy or intentions of third parties.

But I am not OK with my contributions being extremely easy to visualize just
by looking at the landing page of my profile.

I've had several recruiters and interviewers comment on it, and ask me
antagonistic and probing questions about my commit history to a particular
side project repo that I just have for fun. Even when I explain that I've had
significant family issues in the past year or so which has greatly impacted my
ability to do as much OSS development as I want, they never seem satisfied. It
just gives them an extra lever to use to reject someone for political bullshit
reasons.

Since this is common from recruiters and employers, it's only fair, in my
view, that they should have to really work a lot harder to aggregate that data
themselves. Or at least allow me to control whether or not my own user landing
page does or doesn't present that data directly.

Hilariously, at the bottom of the page GitHub says you can send them feedback
by notifying @github on Twitter ... except I don't have or want a Twitter
account ... so I can't even provide feedback.

------
briansteffens
Maybe they could bring back streaks but make them only visible to yourself as
a purely motivational thing?

------
randomstring
I like the change. I keep all my online coursework (Coursera and the like) in
Github. This is code and work that cannot be public because it would violate
the class code of conduct. It always made me a little sad to see big barren
streaks in my contribution graph. Especially when I knew I had been coding
_more_ than usual and working on really interesting stuff.

~~~
jimmaswell
Why does anyone pay for private github repos when they're free on bitbucket?

~~~
ewoodrich
Students can obtain unlimited private GitHub repos for free via the GitHub
Student Pack:

[https://education.github.com/pack](https://education.github.com/pack)

~~~
nv-vn
Shitty as a high-school student at a school that doesn't have official student
emails since they'll just immediately reject my application for the student
pack :(

~~~
jimmaswell
Having to apply for it still sounds a lot less convenient than just using
bitbucket where it's free to begin with. What does github offer better besides
brand recognition?

~~~
Jach
UI.

~~~
jimmaswell
I've used both and the only one I'd complain about is GitHub, especially their
terrible desktop client.

------
petetnt
I think this is a great change. I don't go after internet points myself, but I
think the graph has various other benefits than just showing how many times
one can do a git commit in an hour. For example if I am sending an issue or a
PR to an repo maintained by a single person, I can do some preliminary judging
of response times and how likely is the change going to land by just from
seeing the graph. Obviously private repos skewed this a lot: some people seem
to have disappeared from the end of the earth, but in reality they might just
be busy working on something else, privately.

In general, the graph also works as personal log across ALL of my projects:
everything I do is in GitHub, and I can easily see what kind of projects I
have worked on in the past year and analyse my progress across all the
projects I contribute to. I think it's a great tool with tons of benefits.

------
robbiemitchell
This is great for people applying for a new job. So much activity happens in
private repos that it can look like you aren't that active at all. (Not that
showing off activity is necessary or sufficient, but it's still nice.
Recruiters and hiring managers do look.)

------
pred_
I wish it was possible to turn off the graph entirely; I don't see why I would
want to make it so completely obvious when I'm on holidays or for one reason
or another not working on GitHub based repos.

------
esaym
Did they ever start showing contributions to commits to forks? If I remember
correctly, they only only counted stuff you had direct access/commit bits to,
which I found annoying...

~~~
prashnts
If you open a pull request to the base repo and it gets accepted, then it
shows in the history.

------
_RPM
I wish it would show contributions to branches other than master.

~~~
frandroid
Your contributions will eventually be counted when your branch is merged to
master.

------
danso
Poor John Resig!...IIRC, his streak goes back 3+ years
[https://github.com/jeresig](https://github.com/jeresig)

~~~
sotojuan
He doesn't seem to mind!

[https://twitter.com/jeresig/status/733413302982877185](https://twitter.com/jeresig/status/733413302982877185)

------
taurath
I really really like this change - just general proof even if weak as hell
that I've been constantly working and coding is a big deal if I don't have a
ton of personal projects.

------
josteink
With this change, I guess github has changed from being about open source to
being about enterprise customers. Which is fine for a company which is about
making money.

That said, I think it's sad. It's a shame, but I guess that's just another
signal that open source projects should find another home more fitting to
their ideals (like gitlab).

------
whatever_dude
To me, this is good news. It's a small, tiny, stupid thing, but I have several
personal projects that I maintain as my own private repos and not seeing them
counted there always felt a little wrong.

The number of contributions in my chart just increased 20-fold.

------
thruflo
You have to logout to see how others see your profile.

Toggling the 'contributions settings' to 'public only' on my profile still
shows _me_ all my private contributions.

~~~
hesselink
You can also open a private browsing window.

------
dvcrn
I am happy and sad about this.

I am happy because it means that the contribution graph looses it's
importance. I could just use a cron script that auto commits 1-3 commits every
day and noone could verify the importance of these commits. This is good
because many people just got into the habit of updating their dotfiles once a
day or do some very very insignificant things to keep the streak going.

On the other side it's sad because the graph only showed involvement with open
source. Private repositories shouldn't be in there to taint the image.

I hope that with this people stop with artificial streak pushing and actually
show their open source contributions only.

------
hueving
This is stupid. They might as well let users define which squares they want
filled with a config file.

Before this I could determine what kind of open source work someone did by
looking at this graph and clicking on random days of activity to see details.

Now the "everyone is equally awesome and meritocracy is a swear word" attitude
has eliminated the last of the usefulness of this particular feature.

~~~
knz
Couldn't they solve this by just having a drop down to toggle display of
public or private commits?

------
sabertazimi
Oops,I have to break my code streaks up.It make me realize that quality is
important, not quantity.

------
dc2
Is it me, or is the newly moved contributions text 1 pixel too high?

------
jbpetersen
And here I was hoping to see gists count towards streaks...

------
detailyang
so sad, cannot get 'long streak' :(

------
rexf
This is a nice change. If you care, you can avoid areas of emptiness from your
profile by adding your private repo commits.

One thing this doesn't address (and I assume GH would never allow) is commits
from other sources, like BitBucket, GitLab, etc.

~~~
SEMW
> One thing this doesn't address (and I assume GH would never allow) is
> commits from other sources, like BitBucket, GitLab, etc.

Huh? A git commit is a git commit, doesn't matter whether it was made with the
git cli, github (ie libgit2), or any other tool. Commits don't store what tool
was used to make them.

~~~
keyanp
> Huh? A git commit is a git commit

I believe the parent post is referring to commits made to a repo that isn't
being hosted on GitHub.

One workaround could be to host your fork on GitHub and even though the origin
may be on a different hosting service.

