
Stop abusing GitHub stars - aerialcombat
https://github.com/metatron-app/metatron-discovery/issues/2405
======
aerialcombat
This open source project has been in development for about 5 years by SKT (SK
Telecom), the biggest telecommunications company. (think Verizon) They
launched a marketing event giving people a Starbucks gifticon, a mobile
voucher to use at Starbucks, for starring their Github project.

A bunch of people(developers) lashed back, while hoping that maybe it was just
a mishap by their marketing department.

Then the lead developer of the project, kyungtaak, posted a comment saying
that he would do it again if he had to because he "loves" the project so much.
And that people just need to cut him some slack.

The developers got furious by the comment, and it's going semi-viral among
developers in Korea.

The company shut down the event, and posted an apology.

------
tacomplain
IMO it's github fault to use this star gimmick. Likes, stars, upvotes... all
of these are dopamine hits disguised as curation or rating... The UX designers
or engagement/growth hackers or whatever that plans and are responsible for
these should try to predict the consequences of a system so easily exploitable
to be implemented. Most successful MMOs have whole economies balanced, how can
a 1 variable (can be more considering forks, contributors etc) economy be this
open? Of course someone would exploit it. Github could hide forks and
contributors but it could eliminate stars, since it brings nothing to the
table more than virtual ego. Stop the likefication of software. We need to go
back to free as in freedom, not free as in gratis.

~~~
romaniitedomum
I agree completely. Github is primarily a social network site. Code on Github
is what tweets are on Twitter, or images on Instagram. Grist for the social
media attention mill! And just like every other social media site, it's being
gamed by the egotists and the self-promoters and the marketers and the fakers.

------
JohnTHaller
It looks like SK Telecom (South Korea phone company) was paying people to sign
up for GitHub and star things via a contest for gift cards and such. The
project runner being starred, kyungtaak, was apparently complicit in it
(according to Google Translate of the GitHub comments). They shut it down once
the bad publicity started, deleted the original site promoting it, and
archived the GitHub repo.

~~~
captn3m0
How’s this any different from all the “Follow on twitter, and RT to enter our
Giveaway” promotions that happen?

~~~
envolt
> Follow on twitter, and RT to enter our Giveaway

That's for promoting your brand.

> Signup and Star and get coupons

That's against the open-source ecosystem spirit, where the number of stars is
a measurement of project popularity.

~~~
lone_haxx0r
The number of stars means absolutely nothing. I don't understand why people
care so much about an insignificant counter in a proprietary platform.

~~~
PascLeRasc
Github stars do signify the overall quality and public reception of a project,
at least to me. Github doesn't have "sharing"-type social networking
functionality to artificially increase the number of stars, so I think it's in
a pretty natural place right now and I hope it stays that way.

------
chirau
Can someone narrate and explain what happened here?

The page is in a foreign language and its contents have apparently since been
changed.

What happened?

~~~
reustle
Google translate the first two long Korean posts and you'll get the jist

~~~
bythckr
I did no the translate, but could not understand anything.

Translation from
[http://b2b.tworld.co.kr/bizts/notice/noticeDetail.bs?seqNo=0...](http://b2b.tworld.co.kr/bizts/notice/noticeDetail.bs?seqNo=0000000180)
Hello, company T world.

Metatron discovery event prematurely closed . We will send Starbucks gift
cards through individual mail to those who participated in the event
sequentially.

We will inform you about the early termination of the event below.

======================================================
=============================

Hi, I'm SK Telecom Metatron event manager.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. As soon as we
realized that the event could be interpreted as an event that could harm the
open source ecosystem, we ended the event as soon as possible.

As an event coordinator, I would like to encourage our products to be more
widely known to more developers, and I apologize for any inconvenience to the
event without fully understanding the open source ecosystem.

We take heed of the developers' complaints on this issue, and we will take
this mistake as a lesson to deepen our understanding of open source and
contribute to the ecosystem. In addition, we will continue to support our
members who are working hard to develop Metatron in the future so that we can
communicate more sincerely with developers.

I apologize again and again.

==================================================
============================

I will repay you with better service in the future.

Thank you.

------
thinkloop
Here is a translation of the GitHub comment thread:
[https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ko&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://github.com/metatron-
app/metatron-
discovery/issues/2405&xid=17259,15700019,15700186,15700191,15700256,15700259,15700262,15700265&usg=ALkJrhgqjg87-VoLvw72YcSF9dupODCQ9A)

The core dev seems to be unapologetic about buying stars saying that managent
tracks that to judge the viability of the project, and that many other
projects do it.

------
lifthrasiir
I've produced some rough translations (I had no time to proofread) related to
this incident.
[https://gist.github.com/lifthrasiir/463b3b7e153dafe1319e5344...](https://gist.github.com/lifthrasiir/463b3b7e153dafe1319e53443091f314)

I personally think that, it is clear that this is some kind of abuse but
unclear if it is actually a violation of Github's Acceptable Use Policies [1]
or not, making the incident somewhat more troublesome. Hopefully Github can
update the policies to counter this kind of abuse in the future.

[1] [https://help.github.com/en/articles/github-acceptable-use-
po...](https://help.github.com/en/articles/github-acceptable-use-policies)

------
9nGQluzmnq3M
Most of the content appears to be in Korean. Can somebody provide an English
summary of what happened?

~~~
TheFutureIsNear
Looks like SK Telecom, a Korean telecommunications company, ran a promotion
asking people to star this Github repo for a reward.

The repo maintainer responds saying he agreed to the promotion as it is a way
to show internally within the company that open source projects can be
successful.

I didn’t read too much beyond that but that’s the gist of it.

------
lowdose
Sounds like a valid guerrilla marketing technique to me. This is certainly a
grey area but nothing indicates malicious intent. Even introducing new members
to the github community of sharing software knowledge is a valuable
initiative.

------
hnaccy
What is the benefit for SKT of the stars?

Just make project look more popular? Seems odd.

~~~
JunoJunho
One of the project owner said that they are evaluated their outcome as SKT
employee by number of stars in this repository.

Therefore, they made this ugly event.

------
Grue3
>You are ruining all the efforts that communities have made github stars a
valuable indicator.

Nope, stars are a stupid popularity contest that shouldn't have been a feature
of Github in the first place. Leave that sort of stuff to Instagram
"influencers" or whatever.

~~~
TheBystander
While I do believe how many stars a repo has doesn’t represent the worthiness
or sth, still IMO, exploiting nondev people by bribing them to give a star for
the repo is quite an “uncool” thing to do.

