GitHub is removing the Trending Repositories page | Hacker News Reader

GitHub is removing the Trending Repositories page

75 pointsthorum33 comments

I check this page almost every day to discover new and interesting projects and keep track of what’s happening in the open source community. Unfortunately as of today, the following message is displayed on the Trending Repositories page:

> Heads up! This Trending tab is being deprecated. Due to low usage of Trending Repositories and Trending Developers, this tab will no longer be available beginning September 30, 2022. For questions and feedback, please visit GitHub Community.

https://github.com/trending

View on HN

How is this “low usage”? I look at this every day and the query can’t be hard to run right? There has to be some other motive for removing this that I don’t understand.

I wonder if this is due to a lack of usage of the trending pages or adverse effects of attempts to game the trending system.

Even a slight increase in spam, manipulation and gamification of GitHub features would have a significantly adverse effect for a huge audience, and the perception of quality towards the GitHub product.

That would need to be carefully balanced against usage of “trending”. And if trending is causing the increase, it’s a pretty clear trade off.

It’s a pity we can’t have nice things. But this could be rebuilt outside of GitHub.

What? People actually look at github pages other than the repo you're currently working on?

Yes. The trending page.

I've been using this for quite a few years now, and I've found a number of great projects using it:

https://github.com/vitalets/github-trending-repos

I think this depends on the trending page itself so might no longer work as it stands.

Yes, I checked the code and they use "https://github.com/trending/"

There is still https://github.com/explore. Are they getting rid of a universal feed in favor of a personalized feed? I really hope not.

This was a great way to discover new repos, the explore page feels like instagram and i hate it.

Trending section was the only reason i would use github for something other than work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon

I loved exploring the trending page for languages I don't even know, especially really esoteric ones.

And yet still no dashboard about the activities of my contributions

I have to juggle between multiple poorly designed interfaces and emails to get track of my contributions

This is weird and the low usage thing seems totally incorrect. Pretty much everyone I know who knows about GitHub uses the trending page.

They probably also use ad blockers that disable analytics

I check this page daily and have found many interesting projects and even learned languages because I was interested in a project I found on the trending page. Ultimately it doesn't affect me much, but I'll be sad when it's gone.

There are some other projects provide even more trending information than Github itself, for example: https://ossinsight.io/

I haven't looked at the GitHub API in a long time but I wonder if it would be possible for a 3rd party to replicate this functionality using the GitHub API.

Yes, quite easily I’d suggest. I’ve built a GitHub analytics tool on top of their api. Primarily for internal metrics & tracking community engagement. The api makes a lot available, it’s very open. For public repos you can get lots of stats around activity and community engagement that would enable monitoring/projecting growth.

Thanks for the response! Looks like I have a new project to start on this weekend.

A friend and I built a replacement for GitHub Trending that filters for repos that were created in the time range (rather than trending which ranked by stars in the time range regardless of creation date)

https://trends.vercel.app

Update, GitHub said they would re-evaluate the plan https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/31644

Nooo! This is how I keep up with new trends in Open Source!

Without this, I would never found https://github.com/milvus-io/milvus, for example.

There are only two bookmarks on my browser’s home page: hcknews.com and github/trending

Seeing other people saying that they are visiting github/trending every day too, I can’t understand how it is “low usage”

This page is literally heart and soul of the Open Source. No idea who in the world got that "great" idea

Really? Some winner-take-all short-term engagement-focussed discovery mechanism on GitHub is "literally [the] heart and soul of the Open Source"?

I wonder if it's a Microsoft strategy ...

I am far from being a MS fan, but you cannot classify each bad decision from GitHub as coming from MS.

Github probably thinks that there is low usage because programmers often use ad blockers that disable analytics. An easy way to verify that would be to add a "subscribe" button to the trending page and see the number of people who would subscribe.

Damn, it's literally on my bookmark bar.

Oh well! lol

Maybe we'll see an uptick of things posted on HackerNews instead?

Noooo! I love perusing this list.

this is absurd, love that feature, whats the real motive?

https://github.com/community/community/discussions/31644

if you guys do use, do message here?

throw the baby out with the bathwater :(

Reply on news.ycombinator.com