On 04/09/2014 20:21, Kagamin wrote:
> It comprises a social network in a sense that every user has his own
> "diary" - a place to store and share his work, and users can follow and
> watch diaries they're interested in, and when they get notified on
> updates in the followed diaries, they instantly go there to like,
> discuss and comment. And - in case of github - contribute.

I know that, but in Github its not common for people to follow other people. Rather, they follow repositories, or at most, organizations... That takes away a lot of the social aspect of it, since it's not people you are focused on.
There is also little element of discovering new people through the people you already know (although that is technically possible), it's not a core competency of Github. At most you discover new repositories through the people you follow, but I would reckon even that is not a common workflow. Fundamentally the central unit of the network in Github is a repository (and perhaps organizations). The people unit is very secondary.

Like I said, you can still consider Github to be a social network with a very loose definition of what a social network is, but nonetheless, I consider it significantly different than Facebook/Google+/MySpace/LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram/tumblr/etc..


-- 
Bruno Medeiros
https://twitter.com/brunodomedeiros

On Friday, 5 September 2014 at 14:34:49 UTC, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> On 04/09/2014 20:21, Kagamin wrote:
>> It comprises a social network in a sense that every user has his own
>> "diary" - a place to store and share his work, and users can follow and
>> watch diaries they're interested in, and when they get notified on
>> updates in the followed diaries, they instantly go there to like,
>> discuss and comment. And - in case of github - contribute.
>
> I know that, but in Github its not common for people to follow other people. Rather, they follow repositories, or at most, organizations... That takes away a lot of the social aspect of it, since it's not people you are focused on.
> There is also little element of discovering new people through the people you already know (although that is technically possible), it's not a core competency of Github. At most you discover new repositories through the people you follow, but I would reckon even that is not a common workflow. Fundamentally the central unit of the network in Github is a repository (and perhaps organizations). The people unit is very secondary.
>
> Like I said, you can still consider Github to be a social network with a very loose definition of what a social network is, but nonetheless, I consider it significantly different than Facebook/Google+/MySpace/LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram/tumblr/etc..

It is a social network because it relies on people interaction as its most important feature. Without PR discussions / reviews, without being able to subscribe to users / repositories and without big user base it would not have been that tempting to use. You don't go GitHub for its features, you do it for potential contributors that can be attracted that way (and won't come otherwise). This is a definitive trait of social network.

You seem to interpret "social" aspect very literally here - it is not really important if people casually chat and "friend" each other. Important thing is that same social processes fuel it as ones that were studied in "traditional" social network - large user base that generates content for each other and naturally encourages each other to stay.

On Friday, 5 September 2014 at 12:24:02 UTC, Nameless wrote:
>> It is nothing unique for GitHUb I can blame them for though - this is how absolute majority of web services is built these days and I don't see it changing without any government regulations. Does mean I must like it.
>
> Government control would just mean controlled by corruption. The solution needs to be technological: a distributed github. I have no idea how to do that but I'm sure it's possible. Until something like that gets implemented, it seems to me that "github or GO" (without the "TF" and with a rationale) is the best option. It won't scale to force core contributors to collect patches from services x, y and z.

Decentralized services on their own won't change anything here because they won't be able to compete with intrusive ones. Concept of ecosystem lock-in didn't become so popular because of some evil mastermind behind it - it is simply most efficient and advantageous commercial strategy if allowed. This is why I refer to government control - situation is not fundamentally different from old-school monopolies. It is similarly very effective approach you have no reason to not use as a corporation but very harmful for society as a whole in the long term -> regulated by the government. Of course monopoly regulations don't work that well either because of corruption but at least there is some expectation among masses about it. Ecosystem lock-in, quite the contrary, is viewed as totally legit and even good.

On Friday, 5 September 2014 at 12:24:02 UTC, Nameless wrote:
> Government control would just mean controlled by corruption. The solution needs to be technological: a distributed github. I have no idea how to do that but I'm sure it's possible.

Examples are Tox and Bittorent Sync.

On Friday, 5 September 2014 at 20:25:34 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
> On Friday, 5 September 2014 at 12:24:02 UTC, Nameless wrote:
>> Government control would just mean controlled by corruption. The solution needs to be technological: a distributed github. I have no idea how to do that but I'm sure it's possible.
>
> Examples are Tox and Bittorent Sync.

SF for binaries, they have a good network for this.
GH for sources.

On 03/09/2014 15:17, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> On 02/09/2014 08:20, Dicebot wrote:
>>
>> While you may still clone the repository there is no way to use any of
>> advanced / social features without creating GitHub account and those
>> features are exactly why it gets used. With no support for anonymous /
>> openID input it creates situation where you have to chose - go with
>> competitors and lose notable amount of community attention or stay with
>> GitHub even if actual technological features provided are sub-par. In
>> the end it encourages harmful attitude "there is nothing outside the
>> GitHub" which of course benefits its owners much more than any actual
>> technological advantage
>
> GitHub features are sub-par?... To what, Bugzilla?? You must be kidding
> me, Github is way better...
>

I have to partially retract this statement. There is some advanced functionality that Bugzilla has, that Github-Issues doesn't have (nor does it have a decent alternative).
But the core functionality of the Github issue tracking system is still way better than the core functionality of Bugzilla, I find.


-- 
Bruno Medeiros
https://twitter.com/brunodomedeiros

On 05/09/2014 20:42, Dicebot wrote:
> On Friday, 5 September 2014 at 14:34:49 UTC, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>> On 04/09/2014 20:21, Kagamin wrote:
>>> It comprises a social network in a sense that every user has his own
>>> "diary" - a place to store and share his work, and users can follow and
>>> watch diaries they're interested in, and when they get notified on
>>> updates in the followed diaries, they instantly go there to like,
>>> discuss and comment. And - in case of github - contribute.
>>
>> I know that, but in Github its not common for people to follow other
>> people. Rather, they follow repositories, or at most, organizations...
>> That takes away a lot of the social aspect of it, since it's not
>> people you are focused on.
>> There is also little element of discovering new people through the
>> people you already know (although that is technically possible), it's
>> not a core competency of Github. At most you discover new repositories
>> through the people you follow, but I would reckon even that is not a
>> common workflow. Fundamentally the central unit of the network in
>> Github is a repository (and perhaps organizations). The people unit is
>> very secondary.
>>
>> Like I said, you can still consider Github to be a social network with
>> a very loose definition of what a social network is, but nonetheless,
>> I consider it significantly different than
>> Facebook/Google+/MySpace/LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram/tumblr/etc..
>
> It is a social network because it relies on people interaction as its
> most important feature. Without PR discussions / reviews, without being
> able to subscribe to users / repositories and without big user base it
> would not have been that tempting to use. You don't go GitHub for its
> features, you do it for potential contributors that can be attracted
> that way (and won't come otherwise). This is a definitive trait of
> social network.
>
> You seem to interpret "social" aspect very literally here - it is not
> really important if people casually chat and "friend" each other.
> Important thing is that same social processes fuel it as ones that were
> studied in "traditional" social network - large user base that generates
> content for each other and naturally encourages each other to stay.

I went to the great oracle (Wikipedia) to clarify what is the more formal and proper term for this. Fair enough, indeed the likes of Facebook/Google+/MySpace/LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram/tumblr/etc. are more precisely called "online social networking services".

So ok, I concede that Github can be called a "social network". Although under that interpretation so is any web forum or bulletin board that has more than a handful of people communicating. (Personally I would still prefer avoiding that term.)

I change my point to say that Github is not a "social networking service" then.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros
https://twitter.com/brunodomedeiros

I feel like this whole thread's diversion onto the relative
merits of GitHub is pretty pointless.  Would it be difficult to
write a small automation tool that users could run (maybe
distributed as part of the DMD package or something) that lets
them submit patches/PRs mostly automatically?  Or have a process
which scans Bugzilla and produces such things automatically?  I
know I am not totally up on the infrastructure capabilities, but
lowering the barrier to entry is almost always a good thing, and
the religious arguments can be saved for alt.github.die.die.die
or something.

On Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:35:10 UTC, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> I went to the great oracle (Wikipedia) to clarify what is the more formal and proper term for this. Fair enough, indeed the likes of Facebook/Google+/MySpace/LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram/tumblr/etc. are more precisely called "online social networking services".
>
> So ok, I concede that Github can be called a "social network". Although under that interpretation so is any web forum or bulletin board that has more than a handful of people communicating. (Personally I would still prefer avoiding that term.)

It can and should be called as such. At least as far as I am familiar with this domain "social network" term belongs more to sociology than to webdev / technology. It as a useful term to have exactly because it implies certain human behavior patterns and how those can be used for business purpose, whatever exact application domain you have.

> I change my point to say that Github is not a "social networking service" then.

Sure, I have never pretended it is.