[js2]

> I specifically dislike the "Lessons" section, as it throws all the blame on github and doesn't mention the seemingly obvious advice: "make sure you're not on autopilot when taking potentially dangerous actions, on github or any website".

First of all, this is self-evident. But second of all and more importantly: it doesn’t scale.

The reason we have blame-free postmortems is because people will always make mistakes, so we find ways to change process or design to minimize those mistakes.

If you think you’ll never do something on autopilot, you’re fooling yourself.

[ahepp]

It’s not a “blame free postmortem” though. The author is blaming GitHub for not sending him a handwritten letter from the CEO inviting him not to do the stupid thing he positively affirmed he wanted to do.

The author also neglects to mention he had to type the full project name into a dialog box, which would be critical to any real postmortem. If typing the repo name into GitHub didn’t wake him up, why should we believe listing the number of stars would? The author said he thought he was in a different repo, but that makes no sense.

The real lesson, imo, is for people obsessed with stars to set up permissions, use dedicated accounts, and not toy around with settings you know are dangerous before you’ve had your coffee.

That’s a lot more reasonable than GitHub spending time to implement yet another warning box feature that the author has proved they can ignore regardless of how obvious GitHub makes it.

[js2]

The author is blaming GitHub for not sending him a handwritten letter from the CEO inviting him not to do the stupid thing he positively affirmed he wanted to do.

Please, quote from the article where you read this. I don't see it.

In the article I read, the author admits fault:

> I accidentally made the project’s repository private for a moment.

The author goes on to explain how they made the mistake.

> What put me on the wrong path was an otherwise completely unrelated action: I had just done the same (i.e., hidden an empty README) on my personal profile by making jakubroztocil/jakubroztocil private.

> GitHub’s conceptual model treats users and organizations as very similar entities when it comes to profiles and repos. In this context, and since I just wanted to repeat the same benign action on our organization’s profile, my brain switched to auto-pilot mode.

> I didn’t realize at the moment there’s an inconsistency in the naming of this special repo containing profile READMEs and that it differs for users and organizations: name/name vs. name/.github.

> That’s why I proceeded to make httpie/httpie private instead of httpie/.github without realizing my mistake.

The author does not attempt to hide or misrepresent the GitHub UI that requires confirmation. They show it for both "httpie/httpie" and "httpie/.github".

It does not matter that you have to type the repo name, because once you are on auto-pilot, you proceed past this step. In fact, the author doesn't admit it, but if he's like me, I'll bet they copy/pasted the name. Because the name alone is not sufficient.

The author then goes on to suggest what might have kicked him out of auto-pilot. Providing more information about the repo other than just its name. The name alone is NOT sufficient. And they author shows some example UIs from their own software.

Your suggestion: "The real lesson, imo, is for people obsessed with stars to set up permissions, use dedicated accounts, and not toy around with settings you know are dangerous before you’ve had your coffee."

This simply does not scale. It would require everyone to learn the same lesson for themselves.

I've been a sys admin and developer for over 25 years. People make mistakes. They make them all the time. Putting context-free (or minimal context in the case of the GitHub UI) "Are you sure?" dialogs in front of them does nothing to prevent mistakes.

All the author is asking for is a bit more context from the GitHub UI to help the user realize the significance of their action. This would help future GitHub users to avoid the same error.