This open source project has been in development for about 5 years by SKT (SK Telecom), the biggest telecommunications company. (think Verizon) They launched a marketing event giving people a Starbucks gifticon, a mobile voucher to use at Starbucks, for starring their Github project.
A bunch of people(developers) lashed back, while hoping that maybe it was just a mishap by their marketing department.
Then the lead developer of the project, kyungtaak, posted a comment saying that he would do it again if he had to because he "loves" the project so much. And that people just need to cut him some slack.
The developers got furious by the comment, and it's going semi-viral among developers in Korea.
The company shut down the event, and posted an apology.
IMO it's github fault to use this star gimmick. Likes, stars, upvotes... all of these are dopamine hits disguised as curation or rating...
The UX designers or engagement/growth hackers or whatever that plans and are responsible for these should try to predict the consequences of a system so easily exploitable to be implemented. Most successful MMOs have whole economies balanced, how can a 1 variable (can be more considering forks, contributors etc) economy be this open? Of course someone would exploit it. Github could hide forks and contributors but it could eliminate stars, since it brings nothing to the table more than virtual ego. Stop the likefication of software. We need to go back to free as in freedom, not free as in gratis.
I agree completely. Github is primarily a social network site. Code on Github is what tweets are on Twitter, or images on Instagram. Grist for the social media attention mill! And just like every other social media site, it's being gamed by the egotists and the self-promoters and the marketers and the fakers.
It looks like SK Telecom (South Korea phone company) was paying people to sign up for GitHub and star things via a contest for gift cards and such. The project runner being starred, kyungtaak, was apparently complicit in it (according to Google Translate of the GitHub comments). They shut it down once the bad publicity started, deleted the original site promoting it, and archived the GitHub repo.
If you logged in with a GitHub account and starred their project, you would be entered into a contest for a chance to win some products (or gift cards) like Baskin Robbins, Starbucks, movie tickets, etc.
My understanding (from Google Translating various posts) is that a company was trying to incentivise people starring the GitHub page (in an effort to justify the project internally?[1]). From the Facebook page (Google Translated):
> metatron discovery event
> Event period: 7/1 (Mon) - 7/20 (Sat)
> How to participate: Please comment on this post after capturing screen shot of STAR on metatron discovery in GitHub.
> Announcement of winners: 7/23 (Tue) (Individual will be contacted)
[1] 국내에서.. 특히 대기업내에서 이런 오픈소스 프로젝트가 유지될수 있을 것으로 생각하는 이는 거의 없을 것이라고 생각합니다. 이런 환경속에서 저희로써는 매년 매순간 이 프로젝트가 잘 될 수 있다고 증명해야했고, 그 중 하나가 star 의 개수였습니다. -> I do not think there will be many people in the domestic market that think that such open source projects can be maintained, especially in large corporations. In this environment, we had to prove every year that the project could work well, One of them was the number of stars. -- quote from a comment by kyungtaak, a contributor.
Without knowing the language, the images at least imply that they're giving away free stuff in exchange for people signing up on github and starring their repo.
The core dev seems to be unapologetic about buying stars saying that managent tracks that to judge the viability of the project, and that many other projects do it.
I personally think that, it is clear that this is some kind of abuse but unclear if it is actually a violation of Github's Acceptable Use Policies [1] or not, making the incident somewhat more troublesome. Hopefully Github can update the policies to counter this kind of abuse in the future.
Looks like SK Telecom, a Korean telecommunications company, ran a promotion asking people to star this Github repo for a reward.
The repo maintainer responds saying he agreed to the promotion as it is a way to show internally within the company that open source projects can be successful.
I didn’t read too much beyond that but that’s the gist of it.
Sounds like a valid guerrilla marketing technique to me. This is certainly a grey area but nothing indicates malicious intent. Even introducing new members to the github community of sharing software knowledge is a valuable initiative.
>You are ruining all the efforts that communities have made github stars a valuable indicator.
Nope, stars are a stupid popularity contest that shouldn't have been a feature of Github in the first place. Leave that sort of stuff to Instagram "influencers" or whatever.
While I do believe how many stars a repo has doesn’t represent the worthiness or sth, still IMO, exploiting nondev people by bribing them to give a star for the repo is quite an “uncool” thing to do.
aerialcombat|6 years ago
A bunch of people(developers) lashed back, while hoping that maybe it was just a mishap by their marketing department.
Then the lead developer of the project, kyungtaak, posted a comment saying that he would do it again if he had to because he "loves" the project so much. And that people just need to cut him some slack.
The developers got furious by the comment, and it's going semi-viral among developers in Korea.
The company shut down the event, and posted an apology.
tacomplain|6 years ago
romaniitedomum|6 years ago
JohnTHaller|6 years ago
captn3m0|6 years ago
judge2020|6 years ago
chirau|6 years ago
The page is in a foreign language and its contents have apparently since been changed.
What happened?
octocode|6 years ago
alfg|6 years ago
stordoff|6 years ago
> metatron discovery event
> Event period: 7/1 (Mon) - 7/20 (Sat)
> How to participate: Please comment on this post after capturing screen shot of STAR on metatron discovery in GitHub.
> Announcement of winners: 7/23 (Tue) (Individual will be contacted)
> Prize guide [projector, monitor, headphones, keyboard, coffee]
[1] 국내에서.. 특히 대기업내에서 이런 오픈소스 프로젝트가 유지될수 있을 것으로 생각하는 이는 거의 없을 것이라고 생각합니다. 이런 환경속에서 저희로써는 매년 매순간 이 프로젝트가 잘 될 수 있다고 증명해야했고, 그 중 하나가 star 의 개수였습니다. -> I do not think there will be many people in the domestic market that think that such open source projects can be maintained, especially in large corporations. In this environment, we had to prove every year that the project could work well, One of them was the number of stars. -- quote from a comment by kyungtaak, a contributor.
isoskeles|6 years ago
Without knowing the language, the images at least imply that they're giving away free stuff in exchange for people signing up on github and starring their repo.
reustle|6 years ago
thinkloop|6 years ago
The core dev seems to be unapologetic about buying stars saying that managent tracks that to judge the viability of the project, and that many other projects do it.
lifthrasiir|6 years ago
I personally think that, it is clear that this is some kind of abuse but unclear if it is actually a violation of Github's Acceptable Use Policies [1] or not, making the incident somewhat more troublesome. Hopefully Github can update the policies to counter this kind of abuse in the future.
[1] https://help.github.com/en/articles/github-acceptable-use-po...
9nGQluzmnq3M|6 years ago
TheFutureIsNear|6 years ago
The repo maintainer responds saying he agreed to the promotion as it is a way to show internally within the company that open source projects can be successful.
I didn’t read too much beyond that but that’s the gist of it.
lowdose|6 years ago
hnaccy|6 years ago
Just make project look more popular? Seems odd.
JunoJunho|6 years ago
Therefore, they made this ugly event.
TheBystander|6 years ago
Grue3|6 years ago
Nope, stars are a stupid popularity contest that shouldn't have been a feature of Github in the first place. Leave that sort of stuff to Instagram "influencers" or whatever.
TheBystander|6 years ago
unknown|6 years ago
[deleted]
Trowter|6 years ago
[deleted]