Comment by kmfrk
10 years ago
Being a maintainer on a project with some minor community on GitHub is such a garbage experience.
It’s pretty neat as a general user, but at least you get the impression with BitBucket that they prioritize productivity and project management. And the task system hasn't received any significant updates since their inception - which is a shame, because tasks are an awesome invention, they just have to be implemented awfully with issues.
I also remember that we recently had to move the entire decision-making process to Slack instead where I suggested we just use the emoji voting system to make our decisions with.
What really gets to me is how adamantly GitHub has ignored all the people who've gone on about this forever. Last time they seemed to care marginally was when jacobian finally managed to twist their arm and get them to implement the Close Issue feature, because one repo issue was a radioactive pit of abuse and invective.
I wonder if the whole "managerless culture" is to blame and is unfixable? (In other words, why hasn't SOMEONE had this thought about issues in N years? One is they deem it not a problem, another could be that they think to optimize for the filer, and the maintainer doesn't matter, or... there's no organization at all?)
There could be (theoretically) no one to make anyone do anything, and perhaps the issue tracker is either a quagmire of a codebase or something no one wants to touch because something else is more exciting?
That's one theory.
My other theory is they spend a lot of time on scaling problems and/or GitHub enterprise (which I haven't seen) -- and don't really do features anymore.
But it does feel there is no vision for changes to GitHub (maybe they think it's "solved") and it's ceasing to evolve in noticeable ways in any direction.
Can't really be sure. But I find it interesting. Again, the core is good. It's just curious to watch it so closely and not see the needle moving in any perceptible way.
I like the theory of the flat-office culture or philosophy affecting this.
Then again, it could be the kind of anarchic Libertarian or laissez-faire bent that we see with reddit that makes it exceedingly different to grant special permissions and privileges, especially across subreddits/issues/users/orgs. Or maybe user experience just doesn't matter for today's start-ups; maybe we've passed the Overton window for start-ups deciding it's not worth caring about their users.
A lot of the time, I feel like more of a user+ than a(n) (super)admin on my own repos. I might as well have the permissions and tools to ruin my own project - in the name of pure unadulterated freedom if for no other reason.
The dashboard and notification system have always been POS, too, so it might just be that everything that basically isn't tethered to a GUI is on the bottom of the totem pole.