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Backlog triage of 25 open issues and 24 open pull requests as of 2026-09-08, with a single PR that resolves the substantive ones.
main was last pushed 2023-11-22, so almost three years of reports have queued up behind the same handful of facts. Rather than opening yet another one-line PR, this issue groups every open item by root cause, says what the correct answer is with a source, and points at one PR that applies all of it.
TL;DR — five root causes
#
Root cause
Open issues
Open PRs
1
Heart On Your Sleeve / Open Sourcerer are listed as earnable with (???) criteria, but were experimental and are gone
7
10
2
Galaxy Brain availability is misunderstood (disabled only in github/community, not globally)
4
1
3
Stale links and small table/markup inconsistencies
—
3
4
No CONTRIBUTING.md and no issue templates, so questions/promo/test issues land as issues
1. Heart On Your Sleeve and Open Sourcerer — retired, not undocumented
The README lists both under Achievement List with (???) for criteria and (?) for every tier. That placeholder is what drives the recurring "how do I get this badge" issues and the stream of PRs guessing at the criteria — and every guess so far has been wrong.
The answer: both badges were part of an experimental rollout that was never released broadly. They were briefly re-enabled by mistake in March 2026 and removed again within days. A GitHub maintainer confirmed this in community discussion #190842:
those achievements were part of an experimental rollout and weren't meant to be re-enabled broadly
Fix: move both rows into Badges no longer earnable, replace (???) with the rollout history, and replace the (?) tier cells with — (tier thresholds were never published).
Honest, but the badges are no longer listed at all; also hotlinks assets
2. Galaxy Brain — the disablement was scoped to github/community
Four issues report Galaxy Brain as broken or removed, and one (#134) disputes the bronze threshold.
The answer: in August 2024 GitHub turned off earning achievements inside the github/community discussions repository specifically, to discourage coordinated question-and-answer farming (community discussion #106536). The badge is still earnable from accepted answers in other repositories, and previously earned badges are unaffected. The thresholds in the README (2 / 8 / 16 / 32) were re-verified and are correct — #134's claim that bronze needs 16 is not supported.
Fix: annotate the Galaxy Brain row with the scoped caveat and leave the thresholds alone.
Open issues resolved:#438, #322, #288, #134 Open PR superseded:#292 (rewords the row but drops the caveat that makes it useful)
The opt-out sentence links to bare github.com/settings without saying which toggle. Update README.md #86 proposed numbered steps — good idea, folded in, pointed at settings/profile and extended with how to hide a single achievement.
Starstruck's "Created a repository that has many stars" doesn't connect to the threshold table beside it. Update README.md #457 tried to improve this by linking "repository" to the docs, which doesn't address the vagueness; reworded to "reached the star count below" instead.
The Galaxy Brain table row is missing its closing |, and five src="Media/…" paths lack the leading slash the rest of the file uses. Both render fine today — cosmetic, fixed for consistency. (docs: minor formatting improvement #810 adds only a <!-- Minor formatting fix --> comment and changes nothing.)
Update README.md #125 changes "Contributed code to a repository" to "…to any repository" for the two retired badges. Not adopted: "any" reads as if any repository qualified, which is the opposite of the truth.
Half the open issues aren't bug reports. They are questions already answered in the README (#782, #771), project promotion (#757, #192, #126, #417), badge-swap requests (#417, #248), and test issues (#280, #279, #388, #433, #428, #397, #396, #282). With blank issues enabled and no guidance, that's the expected outcome, not user error.
Fix: add CONTRIBUTING.md, disable blank issues, route questions to Discussions, and require a source link (GitHub Docs, the Changelog, or a Community discussion with a staff reply) on any badge claim. Screenshots prove a badge exists but not what earns it — which is exactly how the (???) rows attracted ten conflicting guesses.
Note this part only takes effect once merged into the default branch, and it is in a separate commit so it can be dropped if you'd rather not take it.
5. Out of scope — recommend closing
These need no code change; they need a maintainer to close them.
Issues:#757 (arXiv-alternative promo), #417 (star-for-star exchange — also against the Acceptable Use Policies), #248, #192, #126 (third-party tools; belong in Discussions), #433, #428, #397, #396, #388, #282, #280, #279 (empty or test issues). #265 references a screenshot without naming the badge — needs author follow-up before it can be actioned.
PRs:#686 (adds a 387-line React portfolio template as a file named abid), #766 (adds a Jekyll Pages workflow and introduces the typo "yourok" in the README), #399 (renames README.md to index.html), #336, #335, #310 (add console.log scratch files), #267 (adds a "Discussion Answerer" badge that is not a GitHub achievement, hotlinked from shields.io).
Deferred, not rejected:#435 adds a Portuguese translation plus a Translations/ structure. It's real work, but it is built on the pre-fix table and would ship the (???) rows into a second language. Worth revisiting once English is correct, ideally with a note that translations track the English source.
@marlonwq is right that nothing has merged since Nov 2023, and this issue exists partly to answer that. If maintenance has genuinely stopped, the kindest outcomes are (a) merging the consolidated PR and adding a co-maintainer, or (b) archiving the repository so the 310 forks and 3k stars stop routing new contributors into a queue that never drains. Either is better than the current state. If a co-maintainer would help, I'm happy to take on backlog triage.
The PR
One PR, two commits, covering §1–§4:
docs: the README corrections (§1, §2, §3)
chore:CONTRIBUTING.md + issue templates (§4)
It touches README.md and adds four files under .github/. No badge artwork is moved or re-hosted, and no existing thresholds are changed. Every factual claim is sourced inline, and the README now records the date the criteria were last verified so the next reviewer knows what's stale.
Every contributor listed above spotted something real — this just consolidates the corrections into one reviewable change instead of twenty-four conflicting ones. Happy to split it up or drop any section on request.
Backlog triage of 25 open issues and 24 open pull requests as of 2026-09-08, with a single PR that resolves the substantive ones.
mainwas last pushed 2023-11-22, so almost three years of reports have queued up behind the same handful of facts. Rather than opening yet another one-line PR, this issue groups every open item by root cause, says what the correct answer is with a source, and points at one PR that applies all of it.TL;DR — five root causes
Heart On Your Sleeve/Open Sourcererare listed as earnable with(???)criteria, but were experimental and are goneGalaxy Brainavailability is misunderstood (disabled only ingithub/community, not globally)CONTRIBUTING.mdand no issue templates, so questions/promo/test issues land as issues1. Heart On Your Sleeve and Open Sourcerer — retired, not undocumented
The README lists both under Achievement List with
(???)for criteria and(?)for every tier. That placeholder is what drives the recurring "how do I get this badge" issues and the stream of PRs guessing at the criteria — and every guess so far has been wrong.The answer: both badges were part of an experimental rollout that was never released broadly. They were briefly re-enabled by mistake in March 2026 and removed again within days. A GitHub maintainer confirmed this in community discussion #190842:
Fix: move both rows into Badges no longer earnable, replace
(???)with the rollout history, and replace the(?)tier cells with—(tier thresholds were never published).Open issues resolved: #782, #771, #675, #389, #350, #348
Open PRs superseded — all ten propose criteria for badges that cannot be earned:
/Media/paths togithub.githubassets.comhotlinks, undoing the link-rot fix from #1032. Galaxy Brain — the disablement was scoped to
github/communityFour issues report Galaxy Brain as broken or removed, and one (#134) disputes the bronze threshold.
The answer: in August 2024 GitHub turned off earning achievements inside the
github/communitydiscussions repository specifically, to discourage coordinated question-and-answer farming (community discussion #106536). The badge is still earnable from accepted answers in other repositories, and previously earned badges are unaffected. The thresholds in the README (2 / 8 / 16 / 32) were re-verified and are correct — #134's claim that bronze needs 16 is not supported.Fix: annotate the Galaxy Brain row with the scoped caveat and leave the thresholds alone.
Open issues resolved: #438, #322, #288, #134
Open PR superseded: #292 (rewords the row but drops the caveat that makes it useful)
3. Stale links and markup
personalizing-your-profile#displaying-badges-on-your-profile; that page has moved and the anchor no longer exists. Update link for GitHub Badges visibility settings #683 spotted this. Replaced with the current profile reference and visibility how-to.github.com/settingswithout saying which toggle. Update README.md #86 proposed numbered steps — good idea, folded in, pointed atsettings/profileand extended with how to hide a single achievement.|, and fivesrc="Media/…"paths lack the leading slash the rest of the file uses. Both render fine today — cosmetic, fixed for consistency. (docs: minor formatting improvement #810 adds only a<!-- Minor formatting fix -->comment and changes nothing.)Open PRs superseded: #683, #86, #457, #810, #125
4. Missing contribution guardrails
Half the open issues aren't bug reports. They are questions already answered in the README (#782, #771), project promotion (#757, #192, #126, #417), badge-swap requests (#417, #248), and test issues (#280, #279, #388, #433, #428, #397, #396, #282). With blank issues enabled and no guidance, that's the expected outcome, not user error.
Fix: add
CONTRIBUTING.md, disable blank issues, route questions to Discussions, and require a source link (GitHub Docs, the Changelog, or a Community discussion with a staff reply) on any badge claim. Screenshots prove a badge exists but not what earns it — which is exactly how the(???)rows attracted ten conflicting guesses.Note this part only takes effect once merged into the default branch, and it is in a separate commit so it can be dropped if you'd rather not take it.
5. Out of scope — recommend closing
These need no code change; they need a maintainer to close them.
Issues: #757 (arXiv-alternative promo), #417 (star-for-star exchange — also against the Acceptable Use Policies), #248, #192, #126 (third-party tools; belong in Discussions), #433, #428, #397, #396, #388, #282, #280, #279 (empty or test issues). #265 references a screenshot without naming the badge — needs author follow-up before it can be actioned.
PRs: #686 (adds a 387-line React portfolio template as a file named
abid), #766 (adds a Jekyll Pages workflow and introduces the typo "yourok" in the README), #399 (renamesREADME.mdtoindex.html), #336, #335, #310 (addconsole.logscratch files), #267 (adds a "Discussion Answerer" badge that is not a GitHub achievement, hotlinked from shields.io).Deferred, not rejected: #435 adds a Portuguese translation plus a
Translations/structure. It's real work, but it is built on the pre-fix table and would ship the(???)rows into a second language. Worth revisiting once English is correct, ideally with a note that translations track the English source.On #781 ("The project stopped…")
@marlonwq is right that nothing has merged since Nov 2023, and this issue exists partly to answer that. If maintenance has genuinely stopped, the kindest outcomes are (a) merging the consolidated PR and adding a co-maintainer, or (b) archiving the repository so the 310 forks and 3k stars stop routing new contributors into a queue that never drains. Either is better than the current state. If a co-maintainer would help, I'm happy to take on backlog triage.
The PR
One PR, two commits, covering §1–§4:
docs:the README corrections (§1, §2, §3)chore:CONTRIBUTING.md+ issue templates (§4)It touches
README.mdand adds four files under.github/. No badge artwork is moved or re-hosted, and no existing thresholds are changed. Every factual claim is sourced inline, and the README now records the date the criteria were last verified so the next reviewer knows what's stale.Every contributor listed above spotted something real — this just consolidates the corrections into one reviewable change instead of twenty-four conflicting ones. Happy to split it up or drop any section on request.