if you RTFA he did actually read the dialog box (which is where he found out that it would delete the stars) he just didn't notice the 1 line in a 30+ line generic modal.
He accepts responsibility for what he did, but points out the very real opportunity to improve the UI/UX of a very destructive operation with real contextual data about what is about to be destroyed.
If I understood the blog post correctly, the author wants the "You will PERMANENTLY lose: All stars and watchers from the repository" to be changed to "[...] X stars and Y watchers..." Which I agree would be a better UI.
Like so often we can easily judge this by how willing we would be to accept the same behaviour in real life and I'm pretty certain that most would not accept an UI where you could e.g. just give away your house by writing the wrong adress into some form.
I did RTFA. I do not accept the excuse that he didn’t read it properly. He skimmed it because he thought it was the same box but it wasn’t. He even admits that it contained the exact information that he was looking for. I don’t see any way he can complain.
I am very compassionate towards their loss. It must suck to have mistakenly destroyed their community. However I draw the line when they falsely blame others for their own mistake.
You can be compassionate for a mistake and still insist someone take ownership over this own careless error instead of blaming others. You mistake compassion for “let them do or say whatever they want because they are a victim”.
If all you read out of that article was blaming, then you didn't read it very closely.
The main takeway that I took from that article was the seemingly low effort improvement that could be made to the UI/UX of that action, which could help other people not make the same mistake.
That's not about blaming Github vs. themselves, it's a reasonable critique of an existing system and looking for ways to make it better for everyone.
Unless you think there is no room for improvement in that system at all.
You need to read more carefully. The author goes through great pains to ensure he doesn’t admit fault. Never once does he say “okay I admit, I should have been more careful.” He doesn’t take ownership ever over the fact that he made the mistake. He thinks this is all GitHub’s fault because of his misunderstanding and carelessness.
Not going to lie, this sounds like classic projection to me.
You must focus a lot on blaming in your life if that's what you mostly noticed when reading that article.
There's no way for either us to really know the author's intent or what he thinks - beyond the words on the page - but you seem convinced that "where the blame lies" was a major motivation, even thought it's all between the lines even by your own admission.
I read it differently, so as I said earlier, let's agree to disagree.
I think the more you write the less you make sense and you’re really grasping at straws here. Nothing you say at this point is more than strawmen, meanwhile everything I have said is not only internally consistent but makes perfect sense. I think you should give it a rest.
He accepts responsibility for what he did, but points out the very real opportunity to improve the UI/UX of a very destructive operation with real contextual data about what is about to be destroyed.