No GitHub: re-introducing an Inbox or Direct Messages is a bad idea!
Posted by jpluimers on 2021/08/18
Yesterday I published about Yet again, GitHub violates the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines by stealing a key: not it is the dot (.), and this week some feelers were put out for a kind of GitHub Inbox / Direct Message feature:
[Archive.is] GitHub Projects on Twitter: “What if there was 📨 DM/inbox feature on GitHub?”
There already is gitter.im (which is public instant messaging around GitHub repositories), and people have enough trouble managing all their incoming private message streams (be it paper/email inbox, social media and others), in large part because of SPAM and harassment messages.
It wasn’t by accident that the Private Messaging at GitHub feature was ditched almost a decade ago during [Wayback/Archive.is] 2012 Spring Cleaning | The GitHub Blog:
Private Messaging, however, was a step backwards: nobody wants another inbox. And a sub-par one, at that. Email is still the best way to contact someone.
Today we’re removing Private Messaging from GitHub. If you want people to contact you, please provide a public email address for your profile.
So I’m with all these:
- [Archive.is] Colin Jones on Twitter: “This used to exist, and I agree w/ the rationale for removing it in 2012: “nobody wants another inbox” … “
- [Archive.is] Kristian Köhntopp on Twitter: “No. Just no. Not again.… “
- [Archive.is] Michael Fleet 💉💉 on Twitter: “Please no. I have too many inboxes already, including GitHub PR comments. Have you considered the nightmares this will cause folks who are harassment targets? Absolutely no private messaging, please.… “
- [Archive.is] 🍕 on Twitter: “Please don’t. Every social media that have DM/Inbox features shows higher levels of toxicity and harassment against women. There are yet so few women developers. Just please don’t.… “
- [Archive.is] Jen Weber on Twitter: “At worst, it’s another vector for – harassment – comments that drive maintainer burnout If someone is going to be a jerk about a PR, I at least want everyone to be able to see it.… “
- [Archive.is] Nameless Ghoul on Twitter: “Absolutely not. It’s a terrible idea which will only be abused. Women will get unsolicited dating requests, open source maintainers will get demands to deliver bug fixes and new features, and the rest of us with any profile activity will get recruitment spam.…”
- [Archive.is] Tae’lur Alexis on Twitter: “It’ll turn into an unintentional tinder app for developers. I sense nothing but pain and issues lol… “
Yes, I know [Archive.is] Tierney Cyren on Twitter: “A reminder that this account doesn’t actually represent GitHub nor any feature planning GitHub is doing… “, but I want to make absolutely clear to GitHub that another private message feature is a very bad idea.
–jeroen
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