Removing public stargazer lists damages GitHub’s social discovery layer

[oyasumiaiko]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Other

Body

I am opening a separate discussion because one important impact of removing public access to /stargazers has not received enough attention: this change damages GitHub’s social and community discovery layer.

The stargazers page served as an analytics feature, a star-history data source, and a way to detect fake engagement, while also providing one of the few practical ways to discover people with similar technical interests.

For small and niche repositories, this was especially valuable. A repository may have only nine stars, no active discussions, very few issues, no meaningful forks, and no contributor community yet. In that situation, the stargazer list may be the only visible indication of who is interested in the project.

By viewing those profiles, users could:

• discover developers working with similar technologies;
• find related repositories and tools;
• understand which communities were interested in a project;
• identify potential contributors, users, and collaborators;
• connect with people who shared the same niche interests.

This was organic open-source discovery. It did not require cold outreach, mass messaging, or scraping. It was based on users voluntarily making a public interaction with a public repository.

Removing the entire page because some actors used it for spam or automated collection is a disproportionate response. It eliminates legitimate human use along with abusive automated use.

GitHub has many less destructive options available:

• require users to sign in;
• introduce stricter rate limits;
• limit pagination or the number of visible accounts;
• detect automated enumeration;
• allow users to hide their own star activity;
• separate human-facing access from API access;
• provide repository owners with configurable visibility;
• preserve limited public access for repositories with small numbers of stars.

The current change turns a star from a visible public expression of interest into an opaque number. That makes GitHub less useful as a place for discovering developers, communities, and related open-source work.

Please restore public access to stargazer lists, even with reasonable limitations. Preventing abuse should not require removing an important community feature for everyone.

[github-actions[bot]]

💬 Your Product Feedback Has Been Submitted 🎉

Thank you for taking the time to share your insights with us! Your feedback is invaluable as we build a better GitHub experience for all our users.

Here's what you can expect moving forward ⏩

• Your input will be carefully reviewed and cataloged by members of our product teams. 
  • Due to the high volume of submissions, we may not always be able to provide individual responses.
  • Rest assured, your feedback will help chart our course for product improvements.
• Other users may engage with your post, sharing their own perspectives or experiences. 
• GitHub staff may reach out for further clarification or insight. 
  • We may 'Answer' your discussion if there is a current solution, workaround, or roadmap/changelog post related to the feedback.

Where to look to see what's shipping 👀

• Read the Changelog for real-time updates on the latest GitHub features, enhancements, and calls for feedback.
• Explore our Product Roadmap, which details upcoming major releases and initiatives.

What you can do in the meantime 💻

• Upvote and comment on other user feedback Discussions that resonate with you.
• Add more information at any point! Useful details include: use cases, relevant labels, desired outcomes, and any accompanying screenshots.

As a member of the GitHub community, your participation is essential. While we can't promise that every suggestion will be implemented, we want to emphasize that your feedback is instrumental in guiding our decisions and priorities.

Thank you once again for your contribution to making GitHub even better! We're grateful for your ongoing support and collaboration in shaping the future of our platform. ⭐

[R0kshan]

+1 to to this. I'd also add that not being able to see stargazers damages credibility as people could just assume the repo owner made a bunch of fake stars to make their repo look more credible or just to get the stargazer achievement.

[illsk1lls]

When other devs who have also made a good reputation for themselves give credit to newer or smaller projects that lends credibility...

I was able to point to WHO gave me a star before, when I would say "The creator of Rufus starred my Windows ISO project" that put people at ease about trusting my work on that project, that is was quality work, and strengened my own reputation... i used part of his work (credited) in it, that also showed he approved of me doing so..

That happens all the time across the site, to lose those references seems like a such a waste.. I can't really think of another reason to be able to see them, but we can work with the people who like our projects as well and losing that also seems like a bad thing..