Updates to your GitHub Feed

[tuves]

Your homepage feed will now have a singular, consolidated feed that aggregates content from your starred repositories and followed users. As part of this update:

The content from the “Following” feed has been combined with the “For you” Feed, so you’ll have one singular location to discover content.
For those looking to customize, we’ve enhanced the filtering controls, enabling you to tailor your feed to display only the event types that matter most to you. Including:

• Announcements (special discussion posts from repositories)
• Releases (new releases from repositories)
• Sponsors (relevant projects or people that are being sponsored)
• Stars (repositories being starred by people)
• Repositories (repositories that are created or forked by people)
• Repository activity (issues and pull requests from repositories)
• Follows (who people are following)
• Recommendations (repositories and people you may like)

We’ve given the entire interface a fresh and visually appealing makeover ✨

What this means for you

If you’re an existing “Following” feed user, your feed content should be familiar to what you’ve been seeing on your “Following” tab. And now, with our new filtering control, you can fine-tune your content preferences to further curate your feed.

If you’re an existing “For you” feed user, we’ve also defaulted your filtering to showcase what you currently see on your “For you” tab. The new filtering control allows you to further customize your feed by including or excluding specific content types.

New users, we’ve got you covered with default settings that ensure you’re seeing the most relevant content. Dive in, personalize, and make the feed your own!

---

Sept. 12th Update

With the latest feed update on September 6, 2023, we made changes to the underlying technology of the feed to improve overall platform performance. As a result, we removed the functionality for “push events for repositories a user is subscribed to”. We don’t take these changes lightly, but as our community continues to grow tremendously, we have to prioritize our availability, user experience, and performance.

Thanks to feedback from the community, we have updated our changelog to clarify and have fixed the following bugs from the initial September 6th release:

• We were showing releases for organizations that you follow, instead of only showing them for repositories that you watch or star. This is now fixed.
• We have also addressed a problem where 'Followed You' cards were sometimes appearing out of chronological order.
• We do not plan to re-include “push events for repositories a user is subscribed to” for the reasons listed above, but we will continue to address feedback as it aligns with our platform goals.

We understand that many of you are upset with the recent changes to your feed. We should have done a better job communicating recent changes and how those decisions relate to our broader platform goals. Your continued feedback is invaluable as we evolve and continue to strive to provide a first-class developer experience that helps every developer be happier and more productive.

[ghost]

its comically bad. I only unchecked the recommendations, and now I get basically nothing:

https://github-production-user-asset-6210df.s3.amazonaws.com/126826528/266170659-77453c51-6c79-45a7-a3da-e92b53a325d3.png

compared to previously, where I would get helpful information on people starring or forking my repos:

https://github.com/dashboard-feed

also, here is a thread from yesterday, where over 300 people are voicing similar concerns:

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/66244

[ClaszyCat]

Thanks For the Script!

[HarshanaJayasekara]

❤️

[mahmoodkhosravi]

thanks again

[Poss-Studio]

Thanks

[LouieJae]

Thanks for the script

[beeman]

Please, GitHub, listen to the feedback of the users and keep the option to have a chronological timeline like we had until yesterday.

You tried the same about 10 months ago and the experiment failed, and yesterday it happened all over again.

The chronological feed works great for a lot of people, it helps discover new repos and people to follow, and it motivates working on things because you can see who starred your repo. And best of all, because it's chronological, you know when you are caught up reading because you recognize what you already saw before.

Having the algorithmic option on the side doesn't hurt, and it might be the preference of some people, but please, pretty please with cherry on top, just leave the option that's been there for years and works great.

Not everything has to become like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. We are here to get work done, not engage with whatever your algorithm thinks we like.

[Bluemangoo]

SORT BY TIMEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

[wigy-opensource-developer]

You already got our behavior data collected, but do not try to twist our behavior to your taste or there will be mass-migration away from your platform. Not every kind of people tolerate brainwashing.

[mehdihadeli]

It is very bad interface, and it is not useful, stared repositories for my following are missed and don't show correctly. Please revert this change to old version

[Dreykon2074]

yep

[SeleneCosmia]

I used the old following feed to discover new repositories I wouldn't have discovered otherwise based on the stars of people I followed, and there isn't any way for me to see that anymore it seems. It shows me nothing at all and there isn't any option to see things that were perfectly functional before this change? Why is every single website these days implementing anti-user-friendly features in favor of increasingly over-complicated algorithms.

[brendanzab]

Yeah this is one of the things I find so heartbreaking about it (posted my own discussion about it here). I no longer see all those quaint little repos the people I followed were starring… now only all these releases from these massive, popular projects.

[koppor]

The "hack" to bring that feed back is https://github.com/Gerrit0/old-github-feed.

[Xinayder]

Sorry, can you please inform me who are the designers responsible for this change? They should be fired.

[softworkz]

Without knowing the strategic goals and whether this change aligns with or contradicts to those goals, there's no point in discussing "firings".
In either case, "developer dissatisfaction" is a red herring for MS and it won't be ignored.
The immediate question for now, is from where (from which executive level) it came from, and how (and how quickly) the negative user response will circle back to the executive level from where it originated.

[itsjavi]

@kjkrum This discussion is just 2 weeks old. But I agree, even if after 2 weeks of feedback they just released it then it's not a mistake, it's deliberate. I didn't know this was a thing until one day ago when my feed suddenly changed.

[sgf]

Stop being a good guy all the time. If you do something wrong, you should take responsibility. This behavior wastes so many people’s time and energy. You should pay some price. Otherwise no one will remember this lesson.
I support firing product managers and interaction designers. Because this is a piece of shit.

[0xMF]

I want to see commit messages from repos I want to watch in chronological order. I cannot get that now as there is no option to view commits from watched repos and no way to revert my timeline to previous from this bs

[beeman]

Right - the issue is not that they are trying something new, the issue is that they remove the option that is preferred by a lot of people.

Twitter pulled the same trick earlier this year where they made For You the only option, then they would show For You each time you open the app, then they finally gave the Following feed back.

Ik hope GitHub will consider the same.

[Zren]

no way to revert my timeline to previous from this bs

Exactly. Normally there's a toggle in Feature Preview.

[takeda]

witter pulled the same trick earlier this year where they made For You the only option, then they would show For You each time you open the app, then they finally gave the Following feed back.

They seem to be doing exactly that, just in reverse

[swiknaba]

Agreed. The most useful section on the page is Recent activity which has like 10% of the screen. 80% of the screen is completely useless: this need feed, Latest changes, and Explore repositories. I'm here to work and focus on what is relevant for my job. If I want to explore and distract my self, I can go to Twitter X 🤣

[Ethkuil]

Respect your users and their confidence in you, "Microsoft" GitHub.

[oblique]

@tuves I have Stars enabled but I can not see the repositories being starred by people. Is this a bug? Where do we report bugs?

[ashleykleynhans]

I am also having this issue with the update where I am no longer seeing my repositories being starred by people. This was one of the most useful features of the feed for me and now its not working anymore 😢 .

[filhodanuvem]

Same here :(

[gusmanb]

Same here.

[coder-layne]

Same here.

[Jrebel-i]

Same here.This is my favorite feature

[kurtmckee]

@tuves I want to see the people starring my repos, and the people who have started following me, and I want it in chronological order.

It's impossible to recreate that with the new feed, and the design is absurdly bad for something that's been under development for so long.

For example, with nothing in the filters checked, it shows "8". After checking just "following", the filter count decreases to "7". ...WHAT? The counter is nonsensical.

And the actual design is now taking up an enormous amount of space with duplicate information and huge margins:

How many times do I need to see the same icon?

Please give me back the chronological, non-algorithmic dump of current information that was relevant to me. This new thing is comically bad, and I'm angry that you've taken something of value from me.

[bytefish]

@kurtmckee The counter is the icing on the cake. It’s so comical to see the box with “8 filters”, when I actually selected none. I call into question, that it should be called a filter at all. After suffering through the new code search and code view, I take this with a portion of humor… and say goodbye to a useful timeline I found interesting people and projects with.

[kurtmckee]

Update: Turns out some kind soul has created a script to restore the original feed:

https://github.com/Gerrit0/old-github-feed

@tuves I'm sorry that so much time was spent developing something to remove value to me from GitHub. I hope that GitHub will restore chronological feed information, but at least I can use browser extensions to nullify that development effort.

[Bluemangoo]

8? No, it just means that you unselected 8 filters🤣

[obfuscatedgenerated]

I want it in chronological order

I don't even understand how the new ordering is intended to work. Notifications from 3 month old stale repos are heading straight for the top, and some change order each time I refresh (o_O)

[theAkito]

If I have only filters enabled, that interest me, literally nothing is shown anymore. If I enable all filters, I get literally only useless information in big card boxes, I do not care about, the slightest bit.

[obfuscatedgenerated]

If you’re an existing “Following” feed user, your feed content should be familiar to what you’ve been seeing on your “Following” tab

Not one bit.

[kurtmckee]

💯 I've disabled all of the filters.

@tuves please post again when filter number 9, the "original information in chronological order" filter, is introduced.

...VERY weird to call it a "filter", and to count down from 8 if I mistakenly tick any of the "filters".

[theAkito]

Indeed. It's basically like they integrated some foreign social platform into my feed, after removing my feed, completely.

[Daniel-Diaz]

The old feed was useful to me. The new one doesn't give me anything I want. Not even commits from the repos I follow. Where is all the stuff? You said you "combined" them, but I can't see any of the stuff I used to.

[danBamikiya]

@tuves Github can't keep doing this to us. Give us the old home feed. This new home feed is incredibly stressful and useless.

[obfuscatedgenerated]

They could've at least made this a beta toggle while they take feedback rather than forcing it on us all. I definitely don't remember this new "combined" feed being available as a beta, only the "For You" tab (which was just as bad!)

[nbelyh]

If it is an improvement, please give an option to configure OLD feed.
So that in your new fancy feed, it is still possible to get the things exactly like they were before.

If the motivation behind is to earn some money with "sponsored" content you are contemplating, then I hate you.

[novium2]

Thanks to everyone who has been sharing this feedback with us. Obviously, no one here in the community team has any control of product development, but we do try and connect the product teams with what people are saying. It would help a lot if you could create a new post rather than updating this old one, and maybe focused both on what you'd like to see and what isn't working, because then it will show up better in our reporting.

[hostep]

Thanks @novium2 for telling us you guys are listening.

Here's one of the issues I have with the new feed, I created it last year, but it didn't got any traction yet I believe: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/66200

[softworkz]

Thanks @novium2 !

Important Takeaways

1. Let's create new individual topics

...for every single point that has been brought up here

2. Drop a note and link here

...so all the subscribers of this discussion are aware and can vote them up

[llvee]

@ettaboyle Is there anyone the team who can replace @tuves post with a post from someone on the product team? I am leaving this here also as I noticed that likely being one of the best actions that can be taken to improve product feedback, improvement processes.

[novium2]

Hey @llvee , replace it with a post about what? If you'd like to create a post with suggestions for improvement, please do so, but just a reminder, please keep in mind that no one on this team has any ability to direct actions from the product team. We're tasked with creating a great space for Github community members to chat. Sometimes the product team decides to engage directly with the community for extremely specific reasons (e.g. feedback on a beta), and when that happens, we are thrilled to help facilitate, but that's usually a bit of a special case.

[ckuethe]

@novium2 I think its fair to say that there are a lot of people who find this current implementation unhelpful or even disruptive; some of them have even offered suggestion on ways to make the feed more useful. I think we'd all like to know that the product teams responsible for the feed - and leadership - actually see this feedback and think about how to integrate it.

As one of the people who's got feelings and suggestions on the matter, that's about as neutrally as I can put it.

[novium2]

@ckuethe I completely understand why you'd feel that way. I'd love to make it happen for you.

However, as the great Internet sages put it, "Sir, this is a Wendy's."

Please excuse my humor there, but it's probably one of the hardest things about working any kind of customer facing role. You totally empathize but often what people want is totally outside of your ability to provide, and then they blow up at you because you're available and the senior VP of this and that isn't. (No one in this conversation is blowing up at us, it's just a very common experience). My job is solely to create a space for users to chat with each other, share tips, and keep an eye out for trends in feedback. So the team's authority is pretty much limited to moderation and pinning topics, you know?

No one likes being told "your feedback is noted and will be passed along," obviously, but...Your feedback is noted, and when some product roadmap shifts back to feed stuff and some product person comes to us and asks "so what are the biggest points of friction for users" we will have all the receipts.

Sorry I don't have a better solution for you. I do feel your frustration, absolutely.

[llvee]

@novium2 The orignal post needs to be replaced with a post from an active team member or a new thread should be opened as tuves is not an active account.

[novium2]

I also want to add, per @softworkz excellent summary, that one thing you can do to help is that when the product team does post asking for feedback, that if you can, jump in and answer their questions. One way for us to win more product involvement is to show them the value of talking to the community. That does mean those posts need to actually stay on topic and be relevant to what they're looking for - which I know can be vexing when it seems their priorities don't align with yours - but if we can create positive feedback loops (if you'll excuse the pun) it will be easier to get them to engage here directly.

[andybak]

We appreciate what you're trying to do but it does end up sounding awfully like "We're a small cog in a completely dysfunctional organisation. Here are some incantations that might appease the higher powers".

The problem is user hostile design and decisions made to accord with a business model that will probably force us to all leave eventually. So I'm not sure learning the correct spells and sigils is really what matters to anyone commenting here.

Thanks though. Must suck, having no real voice in product decisions.

[danielhoherd]

While I understand this reasoning, having everybody come to the community forums just to check if there are questions from PMs about what we think about products, when almost every day there will be none, is not realistic. My guess is that less than 1% of GH users ever come to the community forum, let alone come when it's time for them to provide valuable feedback.

An easy way to get honest community involved feedback would be putting a notice in the feature that PMs are thinking about changing that asks people to comment. Surely people who use and care about that feature will see that notice and will want to respond, and others will just dismiss it.

[novium2]

Ah, I wasn't thinking of having people come to the forums to do that, merely that people who are already here maybe click into product feedback requests by the product team if they see them, and consider engaging. The PMs do occasionally ask for feedback. - in the last month, maybe three or four times? but a lot of times they don't get responses. Granted, some of it is that they are asking super specific questions and aren't really engagement experts, but it's one of the mismatches.

[luohao123]

Damn it, this post at 2023.8, but still, my home page feed not right, the first feed always 2 weeks or 1 month ago, what kind of "new feed" is this?

Please, Github product team, found the bug and fix it.

[dwloup69]

I don't know why but the new page gives me an 'uh oh' message, reloading does nothing but pop that right back up. If my feed is empty, then that should be the message. Not sure what information I can provide to help track this down.

[mryechkin]

The new feed is great, I don't know what everyone is complaining about 🙃

[luohao123]

Hooray! Fantastic! You made an absolutely correct point! 😊

[danielhoherd]

They fixed it! Finally it's not full of distracting, unwanted content!

[llvee]

I have started some discussions around improving GH, if interested in contributing please let me know here or via another way.

[JoseGalRe]

In my case it doesn't show me any feed from the repositories that I follow.
Recently a repository that I was following was deleted, could this have something to do with it?

[kkkkxl]

That's what happened to me.

[farhan2077]

I am seeing github stars from users I am not following.

[DubG1]

yea i am really confused, my feed is that random people starred repos

[JokerQyou]

What's the point of letting people "discuss" on these threads if you are only posting to show off the terrible product changes you've made with months' efforts? Look at all these replies, there are so many complaints, bug reports, suggestions, usage scenarios. You could've improved the feed or let people choose which version to use. But no, you just chose to stay silent for over a year, during which the only development is more bugs each month. I'm so tired of this. I'd suggest you close the community altogether since you clearly don't care about what your users say.

[luohao123]

Please fire the empolee that responsible for FEEDS!

[coelhucas]

New filter is terrible, I want to see what people are starring, but only people I follow, not a bunch of randoms. Stop turning this into a social media, thanks.

[sethmlarson]

The new algorithmic feed is now completely useless, you've destroyed the little value that the GitHub landing page used to have for me. Please reconsider whether users actually want this feature (because I very much don't).

[matmair]

I must concur with this, it was great till a few days ago but now it is filled with chore stuff that is not interesting to anyone and ignoring pull requests seems to not work

[funkyfuture]

yay, the biggest joke are contributions by the notorious Github roaming bot that appear as contributions. i mean, we knew what's going to happen once Microsoft lays his hands on a product. some LinkedIn bro hype nonsense will be the next to pop up. and i'm assuming that one consequence will actually be that repos get less stars / stars removed b/c they wanna reduce the noise.

[benjamin-bader]

Can we please have an option to turn off this new feed? The old feed was interesting (because it was populated only be people I actually follow) but this is completely useless to me. I don't care that some rando starred a repo I starred years ago.

[Pr0mises]

There are also few bugs within the mobile app but I found a workaround for a somewhat working feed.
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/136062

[FaultyFunctions]

This new feed sucks. We don't want an algorithm telling us what content to view. Give us the chronological view back! I'm sick of seeing content from 3 weeks ago above content from 1 day ago. This change was horrible, change it back.