Hacker News Reader

Having published some apps a few years ago, the occasional thank you mail can be a real moral boost. Dehumanized interaction such as staring a project is not of the same category.

View on HN

I totally get it, it's all a question of balance, I guess. An _occasional_ thanks you mail is great. On the other hand, getting pass the 100 stars on a project on github is a big moral boost too, and probably wouldn't feel so great if each one was a mail :)

But actually, I realize both can easily be reconciled : we could send a "thank you" message to projects with low amount of github stars, and just star those which have a high amount. This would both cheer solo dev starting their project and avoid annoying bigger teams on well established projects.

Has anyone ever been annoyed with a thank you email? Compared to the crap/spam/adverts that turns up in our inboxes every single day, a genuine thank you from an actual human being should be fine. And if not, just stick it in the spam folder with everything else. Github stars are utterly meaningless to many.

As someone who gets a ton of spam email and occasional thank you emails from my open source work, I have never been annoyed by a thank you email.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com