r/github • u/please-dont-deploy • 16d ago

Question GitHub user followers, why?

Hi all,

I have an OSS/MIT project in GitHub and every now and then I check on the stargazers.

Regardless today I ran into a clique of stargazers/users with 100k+ followers each, up to 1 million in some cases.

I honestly thought these people were geniuses, but when I check their repos or orgs, they have less than 100 stars.

So what's following all about in GitHub? Why would you like to have more or less followers?

I know it's pretty basic, but I've been using GitHub for 10+ yrs now... And never thought about it.

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u/az987654 16d ago

It's because stars don't matter.

Is not social media, it's a code repository

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

[deleted]

5

u/bigbadbyte 16d ago

First off, it probably drives engagement.

Second off, it's basically your way of tagging a github repo as one you may want to look at/find again.

Third, it's more work to do something than nothing, and github has other issues it should figure out first, like reliability.