I feel that week-based streaks could be a good compromise here.
You still have the ability to quickly gauge how active someone is on GH, while allowing people who care about such things to keep a streak running without sacrificing weekend time.
I just gave up and decided to make myself a rockstar with a couple of lines in the command line using /avinassh/rockstar. :)
the way I see it, it validates that I am capable of following simple directions and running a python script :3 that's got to be a valuable asset in an employee, right?
Or a little cronjob that commits harmless changes later in the week? :P
I don't care about the contribution streak, but do have friends who comment on theirs on Twitter now and then. I suppose it's just another thing to be proud of...
And then what's the point? You aren't proving anything to the world, and they can trivially see that you didn't do any real work. It's like saying "I'm going to write a part of my novel every day from now on", then every day you type one letter. It's very clearly gaming the system, and for absolutely no gain. You gained no skills, you didn't show yourself to be of value, you don't even get an imaginary reward. The intrinsic reward of tracking systems is lost because deep down you know you didn't do anything.
But, this is true whether you commit a few irrelevant lines manually or automatically. So if you're going to do it just for the sake of showing off, at least make it efficient, no? :P
What do you mean it encourages people to not have weekends? Spending 20 mins fixing a small bug or improving docs in your for-fun project isn't giving up your weekend.
Is it uncommon to do some free software work in your spare time? I usually have a bunch of things I want to fix and spend an hour or two during the weekend when I would normally be just watching YouTube.
If it's "work work" (tasks you're being employed to do) then it's illegal in most of the EU to work every day — see the Working Time Directive¹, which requires at least 24 hours of non-work time every week, for most occupations.
I'm paid to work on free software. In the last year, my Github profile shows a single commit on a weekend, when I made a pull request on a browser extension I use. I'd rather spend my weekend time away from computers :)
You still have the ability to quickly gauge how active someone is on GH, while allowing people who care about such things to keep a streak running without sacrificing weekend time.