Apology for Repository Visibility Changes That Caused Stars Disappeared

[uiolee]

Hi everyone,

I want to sincerely apologize for the accidental changes of visibility from public to private in our important repository hexojs/hexo earlier today. Which means we lost all watchers, all forks and around 41.3K stars.

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While using the GitHub CLI, I intended to change the visibility of one of my own personal repositories. However, I executed the gh repo edit shell command in the wrong working directory and mistakenly changed the hexojs/hexo from public to private.
As a result, the repository lost its stars, watchers, forks.

Now I have changed the repository back to public. But it seems that the number of stars and watchers won't be restored.

This was entirely my mistake, I take full responsibility for the error. I’m truly sorry for the disruption and inconvenience to the project and everyone involved. It took more than 14 years of effort and contributions for this project to accumulate around 40K stars, and because of my mistake, we lost all of them. I truly feel deeply sorry and upset about what happened. I want to sincerely apologize to the founder of this project and to every member of the community.

I am very sorry.

• audit log
  

• shell history
  

[uiolee]

.

[ZeroAurora]

the httpie story... :(

[SerJaimeLannister]

(I have come from hackernews and I wasn't aware of hexo, but because of this incident, I am aware of it and I wish it good luck within the future, I have starred it [36th star] and 1st fork of hexo!)

Please don't blame yourself too much about it. Mistakes happen. I also believe that it is partially Github's fault too for giving the cli capability to have such massive footguns, perhaps Github should even have a revertible way to get the stars and forks back given the honest nature of mistake but atleast that's my understanding but Github has been in hot water for so many things (namely the fact that its website itself is having like 86-87% uptime iirc) and so these might not be their priorities of Github team.

But I hope that you don't stress yourself about it, I wish nothing but the best for hexo in future and hope that the stars start piling soon again if you wish them but the real star has been the project all along!

[CSharperMantle]

I guess the UX mismatch between GitHub web UI vs. gh CLI is to blame here.

On the web UI, I get three confirmations when switching a repo to private, the final one being a text input that reads:

Warning: this is a destructive action

Making this repository private could erase these counts by removing stars and watchers associated to users that will no longer have access to this repository:

To confirm, type the number of stars on this repository in the box below

Some other actions, like archiving IIRC, require typing the "user/repo" name instead, but the idea holds.

However, in gh, as shown in your screenshot, there's no such explicit confirmation.

Would love to see if GH CLI would improve.

[uiolee]

I discovered that Github CLI have improved this problem. I realized that I was using the old version package which was provided by Debian sources instead of Github sources.

the below is the v2.46 and v2.92 testing in 20260509.

[williammartin]

Hi from gh. Sorry this happened to you, that's extremely stressful.

While I guess it's probably that you would have stopped on seeing a warning like "cause the permanent loss of 40000 stars", it's pretty clear to me that we can do better here providing more visibility into the repo being edited, maybe requiring written confirmation as we do on repo delete. Some discussion happening over on cli/cli#13435 and would love for you to drop by and help us get to the right solution here.

Unfortunately, none of that would save the fact that the Debian/Ubuntu repositories are so far behind. It's something we've been thinking about because there's still too many people on 2.46.

[uiolee]

@williammartin
Thanks for reaching out and working on improvements.I agree that clearer warnings and confirmation steps would help prevent situations like this.

[tatamu-fold]

Just a heads-up, contacting GitHub support may help.

[Ember-Moth]

Don't feel sorry about it. Everyone makes mistakes. Take it easy

[uiolee]

The following content is the reply from Github AI when I submitting/sumitted a ticket in GitHub support.

Stars can’t be restored after a visibility change

Changing a repository from public to private permanently removes stars and watchers, and GitHub doesn’t support restoring them.

I understand how significant this is for a long‑running open source project, and it’s clear how much history and community support those stars represented.

That said, based on GitHub’s current product behavior, stars and watchers are permanently erased when a repository is changed from public to private, even if the repository is later made public again. This is an intentional and documented behavior, and GitHub Support isn’t able to restore lost stars in these cases.

This is documented in Setting repository visibility (opens in a new tab) under Consequences of changing a repository's visibility:

When changing from public to private:
“Stars and watchers for this repository will be erased, which will affect repository rankings.”
If the repository is made public again later:
The stars and watchers cannot be recovered.
Because of this, there’s no recovery path available through GitHub Support or tooling, even when the change was accidental or immediately reverted.

What you can do going forward
While the stars themselves can’t be restored, a few preventative and mitigating steps may help protect the project in the future:

Restrict visibility changes to organization owners only, which reduces the risk of accidental changes:
Restricting repository visibility changes in your organization (opens in a new tab)
Limit who has admin permissions on critical repositories:
Repository roles for an organization (opens in a new tab)
Share context publicly with your community (for example, in a discussion or release note) so contributors understand what happened and why star counts changed.
About GitHub CLI safeguards and product feedback
Your feedback about clearer context and confirmations in GitHub CLI is valid and shared by others. While GitHub Support can’t change product behavior or recover stars, submitting this as product feedback can influence future improvements.

If you’d like this concern formally reviewed by GitHub teams, you can proceed with submitting this ticket so Support can route it appropriately.

I know this isn’t the outcome you were hoping for, but this reflects the current, documented limits of what’s technically and operationally possible today.

[yoshinorin]

@uiolee
Thank you for sharing the situation. The initial response was from an AI. The outcome may not change, but personally, I'd recommend requesting a review from the GitHub support team. If possible, please involve other maintainers, including myself, in that discussion.

Also, as pointed out in https://github.com/orgs/hexojs/discussions/5775#discussioncomment-16848884, I think the behavior of the gh CLI should be reported as feedback, even separately. Doing so would at least reduce the chances of other repositories making the same mistake in the future.

[uiolee]

@yoshinorin
Sure, I have sumitted the ticket

[Xuanwo]

Thank you for maintaining the Hexo project! I joined the Hexo team at a very early stage of this project and haven't touched it for about 10 years. It's great to see that the project is still alive. I believe there are more valuable things existing here in our community.

So, don't worry about the lost stars. Stars don't mean anything, especially in today's AI agentic world. But the spirit here will live on.

So keep going!

[xlionjuan]

Though I'm using your competitor, but I decided to give you a star, thats tragic.

[iAJue]

Express grief for the author

[sosiristseng]

Starred Hexo (again).

[willow-god]

Starred Hexo (again).

Bit of an abrupt event, but I've been using it for 5-6 years. I know exactly how good it is. The ecosystem is totally comprehensive. It will definitely bounce back.

[AinzRimuru]

Starred

[ItsSunshineXD]

Starred Hexo (again)

[Android-KitKat]

Starred Hexo (again).
It’s unfortunate that this happened.
I’ve been using Hexo for six years, it’s very convenient and easy to use.
It will definitely bounce back.

[Zarijaden]

Starred. No. 546! I love hexo. I hope and believe the star number will rise soon!⭐

[hui-shao]

Starred Hexo (again)
I have always been grateful for the contributions of all developers.

[FrostyHec]

Starred Hexo (again).
Hexo was the first blog engine I ever used. Its ease of use and maturity left a good impression on me. I hope the project continues to thrive and recovers its stars soon!

[stacklix]

Starred Hexo (again), No. 668!

[uiolee]

Thanks Github! This repo's stars and watchers have been restored!
A heartfelt thank you to everyone!

[renbaoshuo]

Yeah!!!

[sosiristseng]

Nice!

[Zarijaden]

GOOD JOB!