HN Explorer

GitHub is removing the Trending Repositories page

75 points by thorum ↗ HN
I check this page almost every day to discover new and interesting projects and keep track of what’s happening in the open source community. Unfortunately as of today, the following message is displayed on the Trending Repositories page:

> Heads up! This Trending tab is being deprecated. Due to low usage of Trending Repositories and Trending Developers, this tab will no longer be available beginning September 30, 2022. For questions and feedback, please visit GitHub Community.

https://github.com/trending

36 comments

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bboytwist
This page is literally heart and soul of the Open Source. No idea who in the world got that "great" idea
kalupa
I wonder if it's a Microsoft strategy ...
playingalong
I am far from being a MS fan, but you cannot classify each bad decision from GitHub as coming from MS.
saurik
Really? Some winner-take-all short-term engagement-focussed discovery mechanism on GitHub is "literally [the] heart and soul of the Open Source"?
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bigredhdl
Noooo! I love perusing this list.
kelthuzad
I loved exploring the trending page for languages I don't even know, especially really esoteric ones.
Kukumber
And yet still no dashboard about the activities of my contributions

I have to juggle between multiple poorly designed interfaces and emails to get track of my contributions

jbenner-radham
I haven't looked at the GitHub API in a long time but I wonder if it would be possible for a 3rd party to replicate this functionality using the GitHub API.
RileyJames
Yes, quite easily I’d suggest. I’ve built a GitHub analytics tool on top of their api. Primarily for internal metrics & tracking community engagement. The api makes a lot available, it’s very open. For public repos you can get lots of stats around activity and community engagement that would enable monitoring/projecting growth.
jbenner-radham
Thanks for the response! Looks like I have a new project to start on this weekend.
MuffinFlavored
Damn, it's literally on my bookmark bar.

Oh well! lol

Maybe we'll see an uptick of things posted on HackerNews instead?

adamdusty
I check this page daily and have found many interesting projects and even learned languages because I was interested in a project I found on the trending page. Ultimately it doesn't affect me much, but I'll be sad when it's gone.
klysm
How is this “low usage”? I look at this every day and the query can’t be hard to run right? There has to be some other motive for removing this that I don’t understand.
coolspot
There are only two bookmarks on my browser’s home page: hcknews.com and github/trending

Seeing other people saying that they are visiting github/trending every day too, I can’t understand how it is “low usage”

RileyJames
I wonder if this is due to a lack of usage of the trending pages or adverse effects of attempts to game the trending system.

Even a slight increase in spam, manipulation and gamification of GitHub features would have a significantly adverse effect for a huge audience, and the perception of quality towards the GitHub product.

That would need to be carefully balanced against usage of “trending”. And if trending is causing the increase, it’s a pretty clear trade off.

It’s a pity we can’t have nice things. But this could be rebuilt outside of GitHub.

rfrec0n
This is weird and the low usage thing seems totally incorrect. Pretty much everyone I know who knows about GitHub uses the trending page.
julienreszka
They probably also use ad blockers that disable analytics
Am4TIfIsER0ppos
What? People actually look at github pages other than the repo you're currently working on?
fouadmatin
A friend and I built a replacement for GitHub Trending that filters for repos that were created in the time range (rather than trending which ranked by stars in the time range regardless of creation date)

https://trends.vercel.app

tianzhou
throw the baby out with the bathwater :(
julienreszka
Github probably thinks that there is low usage because programmers often use ad blockers that disable analytics. An easy way to verify that would be to add a "subscribe" button to the trending page and see the number of people who would subscribe.
evnix
This was a great way to discover new repos, the explore page feels like instagram and i hate it.

Trending section was the only reason i would use github for something other than work.