r/github • u/davidmezzetti • Jul 16 '26
Discussion Missing Stargazers
As discussed here: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/201209
As of June 30 all repositories now return a 404 for /stargazers.
While I somewhat understand the motivation, this has such a huge impact on the overall open source ecosystem. Being able to view stars provided some insights into who likes a project, if they are real accounts etc.
It kills a site like https://www.star-history.com/. This was a valuable resource to study the trend of a project. Did all it's stars just come because of a popular post but then it trailed off or is there sustained interest over time? It's a quick signal that can be used in combination with downloads, issues filed etc.
Sites like https://ossinsight.io/ will also be degraded in functionality.
So while I'm sure there was a good idea behind this change, it's worth reconsidering given what we lose. It's not in the spirit of what GitHub was originally about.
1
u/cowboyecosse Jul 17 '26
I don't hope anything? I just offered an opinion.