stars, watchers, subscribers confusion

[pdurbin]

Confusingly, "stars" and "watchers" are always the same number:

stars	watchers	repo
1120	1120	https://github.com/cs50/libcs50
732	732	https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse

http://developer.github.com/changes/2012-9-5-watcher-api/ via https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/24795 explains that if you want what the GitHub UI calls watchers you should use subscribers_count instead.

So we can get different numbers like this:

stars	watchers	repo
1120	138	https://github.com/cs50/libcs50
732	66	https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse

... with the following change:

$ git diff
diff --git a/parse.go b/parse.go
index 49b3fc2..8f35564 100644
--- a/parse.go
+++ b/parse.go
@@ -57,7 +57,7 @@ type Repo struct {
        OpenIssues int       `json:"open_issues_count"`
        Size       int       `json:"size"`
        Forks      int       `json:"forks_count"`
-       Watchers   int       `json:"watchers_count"`
+       Watchers   int       `json:"subscribers_count"`
        PushedAt   time.Time `json:"pushed_at"`
        CreatedAt  time.Time `json:"created_at"`
        Desc       string    `json:"description"`

However, is this a good idea? Old versions of the data will have the old meaning for "watchers" (same as stars) while new versions of the data will have a new meaning for "watchers" (subscribers). Perhaps we should introduce a new column called "subscribers" and drop the "watchers" column.