If this thread is any indication, yes. GitHub only gets ever more toxic with this gamified social media stuff.

You're under the impression that the few people in this thread complaining about the social aspects on Github is a greater force than the massive amount of people USING their social aspects?

Actually yeah. The stuff we're discussing here matters. The behavior of developers is being shaped by these designs in absolutely harmful ways. I would know, I've been down that rabbit hole myself with video games and other "gamefied" apps.

Look at the article:

> We find that the unannounced removal of daily activity streak counters from the user interface (from user profile pages) was followed by significant changes in behavior.

> Long-running streaks of activity were abandoned and became less common.

> Weekend activity decreased and days in which developers made a single contribution became less common.

> Focusing on a set of software developers that were publicly pursuing a goal to make contributions for 100 days in a row, we find that some of these developers abandon this quest following the removal of the public streak counter.

Look at this bullshit. People doing work just to maintain their streaks. People making literally one contribution just to keep it up. That's fucked up and needs to be fixed. Nobody deserves this operant conditioning stuff.

There's fixes that can be made (and Github is aware of), without turning Github into cgit. I don't want that and pretty much nobody wants that - those who do, already use cgit.

Conceptually, I like that Github has social aspects to it. But Github needs to be more careful about what they emphasise. IMHO the existing mechanisms they have reward rather toxic behaviour.

> So a website used by millions should become what you want it to become, not what others use it for?

The name is irrelevant. The vast majority use it for hosting. What someone wants or doesn't want has already been decided in the market.