[HN Gopher] Gamification affects software developers: Cautionary... ___________________________________________________________________ Gamification affects software developers: Cautionary evidence from GitHub Author : edward Score : 82 points Date : 2022-10-23 20:27 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (arxiv.org) (TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org) | nuc1e0n wrote: | I can't understand how anyone thinks github's commit graph is in | any way meaningful. All it does it increase churn. | niels_bom wrote: | "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good | measure". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law?wprov=sfti1 | bunabhucan wrote: | Has anyone written (or detected) software/scripts to game the | gamification? 24/48h delay/scheduled git push so you can have a | healthy work life balance while feigning to employers that you | are a code machine. | ivanjermakov wrote: | There is even a tool[1] to draw images in commit history (so | called gitifi). | | It is possible because git allows to create and push commit | with arbitrary date, using GIT_AUTHOR_DATE env variable or | --date flag. | | [1]: https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti | TomK32 wrote: | 'Goodhart's Law' - That every measure which becomes a target | becomes a bad measure. -- Keith Hoskins | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law | mistrial9 wrote: | (gamification) an expression of paternalism from the C_suite, who | believe coders are basically ungrown children, and encouraging | that for their own benefit IMHO | teptoria wrote: | I think you'd find that young or old, dumb or smart, we all | respond fairly attentively to gamification whether we like it | or not | einpoklum wrote: | "GitHub removed two counters from developer profiles that tracked | their current and all-time longest streaks of uninterrupted daily | contributions" | | Those the least significant aspect of gamification on GitHub. | Stars, visits, downloads and maybe forks are what developers are | interested in. And - strangely - the article seems to ignore | them. | | "GitHub has gamification elements in the form of badges for | projects." | | What, that stupid shark and cat icons? They're just embarrassing | and I don't even remember what they mean. I found out I can turn | them off and they were gone for good. | youainti wrote: | But those were the interventions removed so they could measure | the impact. | gandalfgeek wrote: | Self plug but in case you don't want to read the full paper | here's a short 5 min video summary: | | https://youtu.be/pwYRVnmnnQc | maximilianroos wrote: | This paper is cheerless -- gamification for good should be | celebrated! | | If we can make contributing to open source projects as exciting | as playing Factorio or watching TikTok, that's a huge benefit to | society. | | And even if we don't care about the benefits to society, it's | also much better for the developers -- they can be part of a | community, know they're making an impact on the world, | potentially get a better job through their passion. | | Is there a potential downside, that people build fewer human | connections, spend less time with their family, delay finding a | partner -- sure. But is it more of a risk than with video games | or their job? I can't see how we can draw that conclusion. | | So let's give contributors more status, and if that means more | badges on GitHub, great. | porcoda wrote: | > If we can make contributing to open source projects as | exciting as playing Factorio or watching TikTok, that's a huge | benefit to society. | | If you suck at Factorio or waste time on TikTok, it doesn't | really affect anyone else other than yourself and your direct | friends/family. If you're contributing to OSS to earn points | based solely on participation and not quality/value, you're | having a negative effect on the signal-to-noise ratio and | quality of the OSS community. That is NOT a huge benefit to | society. Simple participation isn't inherently beneficial if | that participation is just a source of noise. | | I speak as someone who has had to sift through and reject pull | requests and issues from incompetent developers. I'd rather | they not be encouraged to waste my time. | maximilianroos wrote: | If any "incompetent developers" are reading this, come and | contribute at Xarray or PRQL -- you will be part of an | exciting project, and we'll mentor you to become competent | developers. Your contributions will be appreciated by the | devs and the users alike. | luqtas wrote: | coding, specially for open-source projects does not even gets | close on how much cognition you have to burn vs. watching | TikTok... | | i would have someone coding with me excited by seeking | knowledge rather than trying to reach level 75 on Github... | | not even mentioning what is gamification? are levels based on | dark patterns on video-games, created with the intention of | making players waste more time or get more addicted? | | and then what is the end point of having someone full of badges | and trophies on their profile? to compare oneself with others | and feel bad? have benefits over others that a hierarchical | system has? | | append: i am not typing levels were created specifically for a | dark-pattern introduction but nowadays, even if the game is not | free, these practices are done to make players addicted. and i | can not feel how someone really interested into get better at | coding, would care | dleslie wrote: | I'm going to buck the comment trend thus far and state that I | enjoy the gamified experience. | | Getting an achievement in recognition of the open source work | that I've done feels great, and honestly it's more positive | recognition then I would normally receive for that same effort. | | I also appreciate the activity chart and graph, since they double | as a way to monitor my productivity and therefore my energy. If | I've felt that I had a bad week and the charts contradict this, | then it's easier to stop myself from feeling down on myself. | | I am just a social mammal, after all; and a life long gamer. This | works for me, but maybe not everyone. | CapsAdmin wrote: | I also enjoyed it, but I was only coding on my own stuff back | then for fun to pass time without having or thinking about a | job. I can't imagine doing this on non-solo projects with other | people's opinions involved. | | At the same time I'm glad it's gone as it seemed to cause more | harm than good for other developers. | giantg2 wrote: | My company constantly tries gamified stuff. It doesn't matter if | you turn it into a game if I know the game is rigged. | teej wrote: | > They urge caution: gamification can steer the behavior of | software developers in unexpected and unwanted directions. | | Adding streak counters steers behavior towards maintaining | streaks. That's unexpected? | DerekBickerton wrote: | I've always maintained: if you put a number next to someone's | name, then that person will try everything to try and increase | that number. GitHub is no different than any other social media | platform, and has various metrics (Stars, Followers, | Contributions, etc) that people relentlessly try to game. | meken wrote: | Yeah, I didn't see any mention of status in the abstract, which | seems like an important driver. | no_butterscotch wrote: | Yup I always cringe a little bit when I see developers on their | repos or social media asking for follows or stars to their | repo. If it's good people will do that anyways. | | It seems like it can be a resume builder for some people | though. I've seen resumes where people list their open-source | repos and display "Over 500 stars on github" as one of the | line-items. | juunpp wrote: | Do you mean like how HN puts a number next to your name? | DerekBickerton wrote: | Yeah but Hackernews' karma score doesn't really mean anything | to me. I mean it's great if one of my posts gets to the | frontpage and all, but for me it's a useless metric. The only | purpose it serves is optics into how well a post performs, | but that's about it. | int_19h wrote: | What if I told you that there's a top 10 and a top 100 | based on karma? | | https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders | whoooooo123 wrote: | Does it? How much karma do I need before I can see it? | spockz wrote: | You can see _your_ karma next to your name in the top bar | when logged in. Or on your profile. | BoorishBears wrote: | Actually that's something that annoys me. | | I used to not be able to: I set my bar to #000000, which | is the same color as the text. And unless I'm imagining | things, somewhere along the way it changed to #222222 | | I can set the topbar to #222222, but then everything else | shows up in an annoying low-contrast shadow | fleischhauf wrote: | yes | theteapot wrote: | I liked HN much more before I knew karma existed. Seriously | first 6m on here didn't know about it. Now I know everything | seems tainted. | jahsome wrote: | hjanssen wrote: | It's very much interesting how gamification tickles the monkey | parts of the brains of me and even the smartest people I know. We | even know it's "stupid" or "useless" and still strive to make the | number go up. | | Frankly, thats terrifying, now that I think about it. What a | powerful tool. | contingencies wrote: | _First rule of HN club. Don 't talk about the gamification._ | (Ssh... I pressed the triangle for you anyway.) | c7DJTLrn wrote: | I really don't like how GitHub has turned into a social network | of sorts. The gamified elements are encouraging people to work | for free and MS probably knows this. GitHub should just be a | place to host and build code, not to flex your follower or star | count. Some examples of gamified elements I find quite toxic: | * Achievements on profiles * Highlights on profiles * | "Activity overview" which shows an extremely flawed gauge of the | work you're doing (Code review, Issues, etc) | MisterTea wrote: | Use https://sourcehut.org/ then. It is against such | gamification elements and Drew has been quite vocal abut this | issue. | armchairhacker wrote: | IMO this is the main thing GitHub has over GitLab. Most | platforms which support GitHub also support GitLab, GitLab has | equivalents for many of GitHub's features like actions, and | GitLab even has comparable free tier storage (as they've | decided not to delete inactive free projects [1]) | | If someone just wants to host and build code there are many | alternatives (like Sourcehut). The only reason GitHub is so | dominant is because of its already huge following and | exploration / networking which relies on said following. | | [1] https://news.itsfoss.com/gitlab-inactive-projects-policy/ | walrus01 wrote: | If you don't like how GitHub has become a social network of | sorts, you _really_ won 't like how LinkedIn is apparently the | new Facebook. | | I have even seen a number of creepy screenshots from horny | single men on LinkedIn sending unsolicited messages to women | they think are attractive, trying to use it as a dating | website. | | GitHub and linkedin are both owned by MS and trying really hard | to be social networks, so the follow on social consequences of | mass adoption seem almost inevitable. | theteapot wrote: | Wow that's a tangent. | abledon wrote: | my first "wtf" was seeing the "pull shark" badge... really? I | do like that they give you the option to disable showing your | achievements in the settings. | Gigachad wrote: | The badges are just not that compelling. Feels like an | "everyone gets an award" thing. You shouldn't get an award | for making a PR.. Show an award when your repo reaches 10,000 | stars or something. | scrollaway wrote: | ... turned into? | | GitHub's motto VERY EARLY ON was "social coding". They kept | that motto for a long time. | c7DJTLrn wrote: | Yes. And it did that perfectly well five years ago before | they bolted on all this bloat nonsense. | qbasic_forever wrote: | Yep, many people forget GitHub was trying to be Facebook but | for coders from the very start. Back in late 2000s when FB | was the hottest startup everyone was trying to do "the | Facebook of X" knockoffs. | jiayo wrote: | Yes, one of the earliest archive.org snapshots from 14 years | ago shows this: | | https://web.archive.org/web/20080906001759/http://github.com. | .. | fxtentacle wrote: | Love that self-presentation from 2008: | | https://web.archive.org/web/20080905195808/http://logicalaw | e... | Palomides wrote: | you can turn them all off, at least for your own profile | juunpp wrote: | "Focusing on a set of software developers that were publicly | pursuing a goal to make contributions for 100 days in a row" | | Clearly not contributions of very high quality. Must have been | Hacktoberfest-quality commits. | MrLeap wrote: | Gamification affects all humans. This is why I'm making a text | editor game, so people write more. | throwaway0asd wrote: | As someone completely oblivious to gamification on GitHub what is | the primary motivation? Is this some form of social validation, | like resume padding, or do people contribute to this behavior for | some other quality. What goal does this fulfill? | jesuscript wrote: | Gamification works until it doesn't. Ask the most addicted gamers | that exhausted games they've played endlessly. It burns something | out in your brain and you can never truly return to said game. | | Whatever. The burn out from gamification is of no consequence | simply because the economy knows there are fresh bodies to take | the place of the torched. | wwilim wrote: | If someone told me they're striving to achieve 100 days in a row | of contributing, my first thoughts would be "egocentrism" and | "dishonesty". Helping isn't about you helping. And if you're | aiming for 100 days in a row, I'm pretty sure you're pushing | changes you could've pushed during the week on Saturday and | Sunday to keep up the streak. Somebody could've reviewed it two | days earlier, but you kept them waiting until Monday, just for | style points. | chrisweekly wrote: | I hear you, and don't disagree re: potentially questionable | weekend commits, but also know from experience (and having read | many books on productivity and motivation) that tracking | behavior and using "don't break the streak" as a motivator can | be effective. | tomrod wrote: | The article discusses gamification, but really a lot of the | general incentives for open source are to bolster the resume of | the developer by showing they work on important, credible | things. | | Gamification transforms that generally open-ended benefit into | KPIs of various sorts -- rather than present overall value as a | contributor, you get badges for _how_ you develop. | | Dark times. | noodlesUK wrote: | I'm not really sure that that's true for most FOSS | contributions. I think (anecdotally) most maintainers of even | smaller FOSS projects are driven by solving a particular | problem they're facing, not because it generates status. I | think most developers who are contributing to FOSS projects | because it makes them seem credible are not usually | contributing much to those projects (as they're rarely core | maintainers). | btown wrote: | The key here is whether it's "contributing" or "contributing to | ___." If someone's goal is, say, to ensure that every day they | make at least a few lines of incremental progress on their | [game/book/project/set of open source projects they want to | contribute to] etc., and even/especially if they publicize that | goal to create some external accountability, that can be a | really powerful tool - as long as it doesn't get ahead of one's | well-being, etc. But having a streak just for having a streak's | sake is unhealthy at best. | saagarjha wrote: | If someone told me they're striving to achieve 100 days in a | row of running, my first thoughts would be "egocentrism" and | "dishonesty". | moffkalast wrote: | If someone told me they're striving to achieve 100 days in a | row of lying for profit, my first thoughts would be | "egocentrism" and "dishonesty". But it's actually just called | marketing apparently and it's a job. | blargey wrote: | If your code commits are, like running: regular chunks of | interchangeable, repetitive, rote, menial labor that an | untrained child can do, where the only benefit expected by | anybody is your own personal exertion, and making it a | static, mechanical routine with no novel output is the very | goal for the majority of practitioners? | | Then of course nobody would criticize you for aiming for a | "streak". | Firmwarrior wrote: | I might be missing something, since I don't use github that | much: Are you implying there's no way you can imagine that | someone could cook up something useful enough to commit to | a feature branch under development during a day's work? | | Maybe if they're working on rocket control firmware or | something that's true, but it's not hard to imagine being | able to make a small fix/upgrade/refactor to some sort of | app every day | CapsAdmin wrote: | To me it leans more in the ego direction if they were using a | social network platform to track the running activity so that | it can be compared to their friend's activity. | | I feel this is really about wether you are doing something | for genuine self improvement or to gain social status. It's | the latter we tend not to like because when wanting to gain | social status you tend to shortcut and "cheat" the self | improvement part. However it's not always easy to distinguish | the two. | lifeisstillgood wrote: | I think the point the OPs was making is you cannot store up | miles on Monday that you can then release Wednesday. You can | with commits / stashes. | | And that distorts behaviour | saagarjha wrote: | You can definitely avoid going on longer runs with the | intention that you'll have an easier time tomorrow. | jrumbut wrote: | But you can also be motivated by a streak and do work you | wouldn't have otherwise done. | | Personally I find streaks are powerful motivators. If this | were going to affect my work negatively it would probably | be something like "not resting adequately." | aliqot wrote: | I don't think people actually do that though. Who'd do | that? Who would you even be lying to, yourself? | jfabre wrote: | Assuming your question wasn't sarcasm. Literally everyone | lie to themselves about one thing or another... Including | me, and probably including you. | lifeisstillgood wrote: | See _House M.D._ for details :-) | aliqot wrote: | I don't understand how it is possible to lie to myself. | It requires you to suspend disbelief and say to yourself | that something did or didn't happen, that's something I | cannot fathom. | a1445c8b wrote: | > I don't understand how it is possible to lie to myself. | | It's called bias and its various types. | Avicebron wrote: | Lying to yourself doesn't necessarily require suspension | of belief entirely, but convincing yourself whatever you | are doing is worth you doing it. Since it's hard | (probably impossible) to know the object truth of if | something is " right" or not. Then it becomes fairly easy | to justify anything, im sure you've done this even if you | don't know exactly how to admit it or don't think you're | doing it consciouly. | peanut_merchant wrote: | Potentially, the people responsible for deciding your | salary. | | Even without gamefication I am guilty of storing up | commits on "productive" days because I am conscious I may | not have the same output the next day. | aliqot wrote: | > Potentially, the people responsible for deciding your | salary. | | Yikes, yeah I forget some people have that type of | workplace that isn't necessarily result driven. If that | is the case and does get someone escorted at least | there's a chance they'll end up somewhere more engaging. | sheerun wrote: | Yet everyone undestands why apps that help develop routines | exist | walrus01 wrote: | Ranking output of a task by bulk quantity without any measurement | is _not_ a good idea. Maybe some people didn 't get the memo that | taking software development advice from Josef Stalin isn't the | greatest concept. | | https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/795954-quantity-has-a-quali... | | "Quantity has a quality all its own." | | -- Joseph Stalin | aabaker99 wrote: | I never understand people chasing daily commits to GitHub. You | can push whatever git history you want to GitHub. I can rewrite | all my commits so they are evenly distributed across however days | I want to show up green on GitHub. | toimtoimtoim wrote: | As a maintainer for quite popular Go repo (20k+ stars) I find | really annoyed by the amount of trivial PRs (started at start of | 2022 or some time like that). Especially then some random dude | starts to "improve" tests by checking errors etc and submit | multiple different PRs where each PR "fixes" only one file. | | this crap makes my life harder as I do this stuff from my spare | time. Doing comprehensive review takes me 30min to 1h sometime | more couple of hours to provide alternatives with examples etc. | | I have not seen almost no rise of useful PRs that add features or | fix bugs since that change in early 2022. Only rise of trivial | nononse PRs. | aliqot wrote: | A good idea is to create a file called CONTRIBUTING, and then | inside put 5 of your top bullet points for what you expect form | a PR. I thought it was dumb at first, but people actually used | them to my surprise. Hope it works out for you! Also it helps | if you don't tag your repos for the hackathon things. | maximilianroos wrote: | As a maintainer for two less popular repos (3K & 5K stars), I'm | very happy to get small PRs with incremental changes. Many of | our large contributors have started this way. | | We have a robust test and linting suite on both, so we often | don't need much human engagement for reviews -- code looks | reasonable, tests pass, smash "Merge". | | Out of interest -- do you find they're not actually improving | the code? Or it's just not worth the time to review it? | cehrlich wrote: | How many stars were you at when this began to happen? I | maintain a repo with 8k stars and so far we've not gotten a | single PR that felt like it was in bad faith - even with the | hacktober fest tag. | k__ wrote: | Somehow, I never cared about GitHubs social media features. It's | just a cheap way to host code. | | On the other hand, I generally don' tend to get addicted easily. | martinwoodward wrote: | Martin from GitHub here. I think we'd consider this very much 'by | design' in removing the streak counter so I'm glad it had the | desired affect. Coding 100 days straight with no breaks isn't | good for anyone. | nuc1e0n wrote: | The commit graph should at lest have a disclaimer of some kind. | Plus I think the lines of code added/removed are a better | indicator than number of commits. Perhaps with some heuristic | to detect whether a lot of lines were being changed similarly, | such as if code was changed by a wizard or from a find and | replace. | | A colleague once showed me a tool to produce back dated commits | in bogus git repos so you can draw pictures on your commit | graph. You should know that people are gaming the gamification. | systemvoltage wrote: | > Coding 100 days straight with no breaks isn't good for | anyone. | | Why? I've done that and it has been amazing for me. I don't | want other people telling me what's good or not. Absolute | statements like this is just social malaise and not based in | objectivity in the slightest. | | The current social bandwagon can be summarized as: "Work is | bad. Hard work is toxic. Perseverance is not healthy". | | HN is just reflecting r/antiwork ethics. | | Complete and utter social non-sense. People have just stopped | thinking for themselves. | BoorishBears wrote: | > Why? | | Well one might start to excessively think like a computer! | | For example, most humans can account for the imprecise nature | of language and understand that "for anyone" doesn't | necessarily mean _every individual human on earth_ , but | rather a sizeable portion of people. And "isn't good" is | speaking relative to the poster's ideas rather than them | claiming to have determined an absolute measure of the term | "good". | | - | | But a computer struggles with such fuzzy constraints and | falls back to the most literal interpretation of any | statement. | | At which point the GPT-3 model the computer is running might | regurgitate some overreaction by jumping from someone | essentially saying: "everything in moderation" to | interpreting it as an attack on hard work and good work | ethics. | adamisom wrote: | This is an unfair attack. Choosing "for anyone" _instead_ | of another phrase does indeed carry meaning. You 're both | finding more meaning than is justified. A little wobble in | imprecision from martin led to a bigger one in | systemvoltage, led to a bigger one in you. | | (A better ending sentence from martin might've been "We | don't want to incentivize 100-day streaks." But that has | its own, orthogonal downsides--oh, GitHub's in the business | of setting incentives? Uh oh... So all in all, I think I | understand his choice of phrasing.) | systemvoltage wrote: | I'm just generally fed up of antiwork culture here. We | are teaching youngsters to never persevere and push | themselves to the limit, ensuring they'll never realize | their full potential and spiraling downwards in a low | quality life of lethargy and resentment towards those who | succeed. | | I thought this is "Hacker News". The tone here has slid | significantly in last 5 years. Folks like Martin | apologizing indirectly. | Kiro wrote: | I want to code every single day for the rest of my life. I have | no interest in vacations, traveling or any of that nonsense. | Queue29 wrote: | Nobody is stopping you. | k0k0r0 wrote: | My sarcasm detector is not sure about this one. | aliqot wrote: | Martin thanks for jumping in, the thing I'd love most is when | I'm logged in and go to github.com, just take me to my | repository list. I'd pay money for that. | ivanjermakov wrote: | Force your browser to open | https://github.com/USERNAME?tab=repositories instead of the | homepage by default by altering autocomplete priority (in | Chrome[1], in Firefox[2]). | | [1]: https://superuser.com/a/1402013/1109910 | | [2]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/address-bar- | autocomplet... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-23 23:00 UTC)