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by elzi 3438 days ago
I would love more discoverability for Github - but can't help but think this doesn't reflect what is "trending". Github does, fairly accurate, show what's trending - I think it's just that trends in software development can fatigue and annoy a lot of developers.

From what I understand, creating an algorithm to reflect what is active/popular/well-supported and well-contributed, without creating the over-saturation/bubbling/reddit-like effect is hard to do, and doesn't necessarily get easier with a large data set.

I hope someone more clever than myself can come up with something, though!
3 comments
tggran 3438 days ago
This site has a list of repos with fast growth in their number of stars: http://gittrends.io/#/explore?page=1&language=All&domain=All.... The list seems to be based on the shape of the curve of stars growth.
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nagasaki45 3438 days ago
One of the problems I see with stars on github is the extreme hype around new JS frameworks, which is especially noticable in GitTrends. These projects are indeed trendy, but when you try to choose a tool / technology stars become problematic. I'm not saying that the metric I propose is more "objective" in any sense, but in my subjective opinion it promotes better values for open source projects.

Moreover, please don't think that I only count commits and see the about page (http://www.krihelinator.xyz/about) for more details about the metric.

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tggran 3438 days ago
Yes, I agree, but I also think the most interesting comparisons are intra-ecosystem. It does not make sense to use stars to compare a JS framework with a Clojure one, for example
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Vinnl 3438 days ago
Maybe an algorithm that ranks based on number of unique contributors in the past month or so?
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nagasaki45 3438 days ago
I agree, that's why the number of contributors in the last week have the most weight in the metric. See the about page (http://krihelinator.xyz/about) for more details.
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ukyrgf 3438 days ago
Yeah but Free Code Camp can't honestly be 'trending' for two years straight.
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the_rara_avis 3438 days ago
It does because one of the getting started tutorials features a GIF that suggests newcomers star their repository.
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