> 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.
It's not unreasonable for the author to have taken the action they did given what they were trying to do. The inconsistent UX for User vs Organization READMEs is a major factor in how the error happened.
And given the number of single-repo orgs where the org's main product repo name == the org's name, well, it's not as surprising I'd say.
Note the repository names here are "httpie/httpie" and "httpie/.github". I don't use github(but I do use git), but the difference between the two is not exactly clear to me.
They could show you the number of stars, follows, commits, creation date, the number of files, all sorts of things.
Also, note that github themselves accidentally set one of their repos to private, but restored it to a previous state through backups. If the move is so boneheaded, why did github make it themselves?
A better question might be why, after making the mistake(which was big enough for the CEO to tweet about), and restoring from backups, they didn't just fix the glitch and prevent this sort of behavior.
I’ve never liked those “type this string to confirm” dialogs. It doesn’t actually tell me what I’m confirming aside from the name of it (and names are easy to get muddled up if you’re tired or rushing through something). What’s more, dialogs like that encourage people to copy/paste those often long strings, which completely sidesteps the diligence they’re trying to encourage.
Whether you agree with the tone of that article or not, the UI suggestions made are sensible. Showing the contents of the repo you’re about to change is a lot more useful than asking someone to type the name of it.
Yeah, I also found that tone sort of jarring, but they do bring up a good point; the warning banner and inputs should be contextual and having to input the number of things affected would be a UI improvement. And I can understand why they would write this in anger/frustration.
I think in the "But theres a confirmation box, right?" and if I had to quote a portion I'd quote
>>"To paraphrase, the box tells you “You’re about to demolish a house. If there are any people inside, they will all die”. But it doesn’t include anything specific to break you out of your auto-pilot mode if you’ve confused the address and think you’re looking at an empty house."
>>"The dialog should be more contextual and, paraphrasing again, it should say “You’re about to kill 55,000 people.” That would’ve certainly made me pause."
Theres something about the juxtaposition that makes it feel like it should have been obvious. I think its because in those examples you would blame whoever didn't put whatever guard rail was necessary to prevent those outcomes. My suspicion is that it wasn't the authors intent and they were probably just upset, but thats an opinion I formed after reading the rest.
> If a "type your repository name to confirm" box still doesn't make you double check that you picked the right repository, what else can they even do?
It makes you type user/repo, which is different in a serious way. It's easy for the difference between ".github" and "httpie" to set off alarm bells. But the difference between "httpie/.github" and "httpie/httpie" can slip through.
> "It's their fault, they only showed 5 warning banners. A 6th one would have totally stopped me from doing this."
The request is for the warning to say how much will be deleted, not to add another step.
Also seems a bit suspect that they had a "perfect UI/UX example" to show how they would have handled these dialogs. Is this whole thing an advertisement for HTTPie?
As much as I dislike the general tone of the blogpost (as well as specifics like expecting special treatment (ie restoring a backup) in exchange for money when 1) Github doesn't offer that as a standalone service and 2) that wasn't already in their contract), I don't see how the example UI is anything but a straight improvement.
I came in to say precisely this. It’s easy to point fingers after the fact but probably the person wouldn’t have checked regardless of the message in the dialog box.
“They warned me but because I didn’t read the dialog box because it was too boring!
if you RTFA he did actually read the dialog box (which is where he found out that it would delete the stars) he just didn't notice the 1 line in a 30+ line generic modal.
He accepts responsibility for what he did, but points out the very real opportunity to improve the UI/UX of a very destructive operation with real contextual data about what is about to be destroyed.
If I understood the blog post correctly, the author wants the "You will PERMANENTLY lose: All stars and watchers from the repository" to be changed to "[...] X stars and Y watchers..." Which I agree would be a better UI.
Like so often we can easily judge this by how willing we would be to accept the same behaviour in real life and I'm pretty certain that most would not accept an UI where you could e.g. just give away your house by writing the wrong adress into some form.
I did RTFA. I do not accept the excuse that he didn’t read it properly. He skimmed it because he thought it was the same box but it wasn’t. He even admits that it contained the exact information that he was looking for. I don’t see any way he can complain.
I am very compassionate towards their loss. It must suck to have mistakenly destroyed their community. However I draw the line when they falsely blame others for their own mistake.
You can be compassionate for a mistake and still insist someone take ownership over this own careless error instead of blaming others. You mistake compassion for “let them do or say whatever they want because they are a victim”.
If all you read out of that article was blaming, then you didn't read it very closely.
The main takeway that I took from that article was the seemingly low effort improvement that could be made to the UI/UX of that action, which could help other people not make the same mistake.
That's not about blaming Github vs. themselves, it's a reasonable critique of an existing system and looking for ways to make it better for everyone.
Unless you think there is no room for improvement in that system at all.
You need to read more carefully. The author goes through great pains to ensure he doesn’t admit fault. Never once does he say “okay I admit, I should have been more careful.” He doesn’t take ownership ever over the fact that he made the mistake. He thinks this is all GitHub’s fault because of his misunderstanding and carelessness.
Not going to lie, this sounds like classic projection to me.
You must focus a lot on blaming in your life if that's what you mostly noticed when reading that article.
There's no way for either us to really know the author's intent or what he thinks - beyond the words on the page - but you seem convinced that "where the blame lies" was a major motivation, even thought it's all between the lines even by your own admission.
I read it differently, so as I said earlier, let's agree to disagree.
I think the more you write the less you make sense and you’re really grasping at straws here. Nothing you say at this point is more than strawmen, meanwhile everything I have said is not only internally consistent but makes perfect sense. I think you should give it a rest.
If a "type your repository name to confirm" box still doesn't make you double check that you picked the right repository, what else can they even do?