[belter]

Your comment missed the main lesson of the post.

GitHub (Microsoft) had a non intuitive UI feature, they themselves were victim of. They restored for their own repo but not for the customer repo...Zero customer focus is the lesson here.

"...In our case, however, they refuse to do that, citing undesirable side effects and the cost of resources. We even offered GitHub financial compensation for any resources required. But, sadly, they declined. They have other priorities than resurrecting the community of one of the oldest and most popular community projects on their platform..."

"...So the answer to the question is, unfortunately, the following: GitHub will restore a repo damaged by making it private. But only if it’s one of their own projects, not a community one.."