Humans.txt | Hacker News Reader

Humans.txt

github.com

59 pointsvinnyglennon20 comments

Since robots.txt is a list of directives and restrictions on computerized visitors to a site, shouldn't humans.txt basically be a tutorial/code of conduct?

Something like:

"Hello Human, Welcome to Github. You should use this site to upload a bunch of code that others might find useful, or contribute to code others have written. You can write comments on any code you find, but please don't be a jerk!"

The humans.txt project has a slightly different goal for the endpoint vs. robots.txt:

http://humanstxt.org/

It's interesting (in my mind, disappointing) that Github lists only active staff-- in my mind, humans.txt should document all the people who have ever worked to bring a website to its current state.

It was my understanding that it was supposed to – kind of like the credits at the end of a movie. It's not a list of people who work with the production company when you see the movie, just when it was made. Add people whenever you want, but taking people out just makes it another, less readable "About Us" page.

I wondered about that. The spec isn't clear about it, so we've been taking people out if they leave.

The old company that I worked for added a "Thanks" section which I am quite happy about: http://mmm.dk/humans.txt

It's not listing all active staff. I wonder what the requirements are.

If I had to guess, I'd say it lists the people who take the initiative/care enough to edit the file for themselves and commit their updates. Github is famous for having an open organization, so it wouldn't surprise me if there were no designated maintainer/required process to add yourself to humans.txt.

It may just be a script that gets all the active org members who can edit github/github and copies their profile info.

Hacked up a chart of the locations - http://goo.gl/f8cVWO

Unsurprisingly, San francisco has a lot of Githubbers.

Am I the only one that is annoyed that this doesn’t use RFC 5785¹ – i.e. /.well-known/humans.txt?

① https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5785

I like this one http://sonetin.com/humans.txt

There's a reason Steve removed "easter eggs" and lists of people that worked on projects at Apple: there's no reason to give other companies a list to poach from. I don't know why GitHub is making this so easy.

Maybe some companies don't view their employees as their exclusive property that they have to be kept under wraps. If you take this idea to its logical conclusion you'd have to ban your employees from using sites like LinkedIn, which make it really easy to find out who works where.

Much better to show your employees that they're appreciated at your company, then maybe they'll continue staying because they really like their job, not because you've set up some policy where other companies who might want to hire them can't find out who they are.

I fail to understand how that guy is soooo euologised in the tech community....what you just said, wage fixing agreements and non-poaching agreements of his staff...what a bad example he is.

It's worth remembering that a lot of people in the tech community are also evil.

two github people work in south bend, in ? I'm curious what the story is there, if anybody wants to talk about it.

Find: “Julie Ann Horvath”

Results: 0

Cool story… 👎

Are other non-employees on this list?

No. One of the original founders and their original designer / head of product are not on the list as they have both left the company.

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