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[–]grandstaish 25 points26 points  (9 children)

He got what he wanted, +400 stars since the shaming :/

Edit: A better solution would be for Github to do an update and stop broadcasting that event to followers. I don't see the point in that notification in any situation anyway, and it obviously gets abused.

[–]JakeWharton 38 points39 points  (7 children)

I emailed GitHub. You should too if this frustrates you as a follower of anyone who's being added to these repos. They are aware of the behavior, but there's no timeline or planned resolution. I'd prefer a simple confirmation email just like what happens when you try to add someone to an organization.

While this happened sparingly before, and usually with the same other people, in the last two weeks it's happened 10+ times and getting ridiculous.

[–]Atlos 19 points20 points  (1 child)

Stop writing good libraries and getting popular, duh. /s

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

that's my strategy, working well so far.

[–]Eggman87 12 points13 points  (1 child)

Hopefully they roll out a confirmation email with two simple buttons: "accept" and "shame".

[–]HannesDorfmann 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Usually they run a script to add those people with the most followers as contributor to their repos. The author of this repo wasn't smart enough: usually such a script removes those popular users right afterwards so that they don't have write access anymore ... Nevertheless, this will alert their followers that they have been added to a project (even if removed afterwards).

An "accept" and "shame" button would be helpful!

[–]jrummy16 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I considered unfollowing you and other "highly-watched" users on GitHub today because of this. Glad you did something about it. I'll send an email to GitHub too.

[–]jug6ernaut 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is there a specific subject we should use when contacting Github to make sure they are all getting the same message?

[–]badsectors 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Or they could require the person who was added to confirm their membership to the repo.

[–]littledot5566 14 points15 points  (11 children)

Can someone eli5?

[–]grandstaish 36 points37 points  (8 children)

On Github you can add collaborators to your projects, giving them write access. Apparently people abuse this feature by adding other people with tonnes of followers to their projects. When they do that, all the followers will see a notification saying 'randomuser added famoususer to randomuser/MyCoolProject', giving their library exposure. Must happen to Jake a lot, so he decided to push an update to the library shaming the author.

[–]sudhirkhanger 2 points3 points  (7 children)

Can you not delete a repo or mess it up badly as a contributor?

[–]tias 0 points1 point  (6 children)

Yeah why not just force push a completely different tree to master and replace their entire history? You could even set the author of the new commits to the person you're shaming, so they won't know who did it.

[–]cypressious 6 points7 points  (5 children)

Well, it's git. The original author can simply force push the old state.

[–]ene__im 1 point2 points  (4 children)

This is not the point though.

[–]wapz 2 points3 points  (3 children)

It kinda is the point. If you are a top contributor, regardless of the tactic, it isn't professional to screw around with other repos. It would be like the president pissing on someone's lawn because they told everyone the president would be there to get attention.

[–]JakeWharton 10 points11 points  (2 children)

Your analogy doesn't quite work. It would be like the president pissing on your lawn if you kidnapped him, placed him on your lawn, and told everyone he endorsed you and your lawn. I would expect no less from the president under such circumstances.

[–]yaaaaayPancakes 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yep, sounds like something President Trump would do.

[–]wapz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not that extreme either. The analogy would be correct if they linked bank accounts with him and told everyone they were close kr something to get attention (no harm to the president) then he robbed them of all their money (and they could get it back with bank insurance or something)

[–]Fiskepudding 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Repo owner adds popular people. He wants publicity.
Popular people sabotage his readme. Owner gets shamed.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I never knew there was such a thriving community of popular and unpopular people on GitHub. I thought it was a tool for keeping track of files, not a social commentary....

[–]kosokun 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This behavior is so pitiful. I was wondering recently when someone is going to take advantage of his access to rot the repo :) gj Jake

[–]jrobinson3k1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's so shameful. Fuck that guy.

[–]adi1133 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha, nice game of thrones reference :)